Download Ain`t I a Muslim woman?: African American Muslim Women

Claremont Colleges
Scholarship @ Claremont
Pomona Senior Theses
Pomona Student Scholarship
2010
Ain't I a Muslim woman?: African American
Muslim Women Practicing 'Multiple Critique'
Sara Aceves
Pomona College
Recommended Citation
Aceves, Sara, "Ain't I a Muslim woman?: African American Muslim Women Practicing 'Multiple Critique'" (2010). Pomona Senior
Theses. Paper 38.
http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_theses/38
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Ain’t
I
a
Muslim
Woman?
African
American
Muslim
Women
Practicing
‘Multiple
Critique’
Sara
Aceves
Submitted
to
the
Department
of
Religious
Studies
of
Pomona
College
in
partial
fulfillment
of
the
requirements
for
the
Senior
Exercise
for
the
Bachelor
in
Arts.
Professor
Zayn
Kassam
Professor
Erin
Runions
Pomona
College
2010
Table
of
Contents
All
that
is
left
to
us
by
tradition
is
mere
words.
It
is
up
to
us
to
find
out
what
they
mean.
ibn
Arabi
Acknowledgements
Forward
1/Introduction
2/Third
Resurrection
3/BAMF
4/Islamic
feminism
6/Conclusion
Bibliography
2
3
6
14
27
46
64
70
1
Acknowledgments
i
am
because
we
are
African
proverb
thank
you
God.
For
everything.
thank
you
mama
for
pushing
me
to
do
my
best
and
expecting
so
much
from
me.
And
for
being
an
example
of
strength,
independence,
and
faith.
thank
you
papa
for
being
my
champion,
confidant,
editor,
bank,
and
provider
of
dark
chocolate.
And
putting
up
with
my
moodiness.
thank
you
friends
for
supporting
and
encouraging
me.
And
thank
you
for
listening.
thank
you
Professor
Zayn
Kassam
for
showing
me
(and
modeling)
a
path
to
do
the
work
that
I
am
doing,
culminating/beginning
with
the
subjects
of
this
thesis.
What
more
appreciation
can
I
show
except
to
say
that
your
profound
instruction,
wisdom,
affirmation,
and
friendship
have
helped
(trans)form
my
sense
of
self
and
will
always
endure.
thank
you
Professor
Erin
Runions
for
helping
me
pull
my
socks
up
and
crank
out
my
thesis,
for
facilitating
an
open
and
critical
class
environment
so
I
can
try
out
my
ideas
and
be
moved
by
others,
and
for
all
your
insight
and
attentiveness.
thank
you
every
wonderful
professor
I
have
had
for
facilitating
my
transformation
and
inspiring
different
pieces
of
my
thesis.
thank
you
Women’s
Union—the
space,
the
spirit,
the
people—for
being
a
place
where
my
voice
could
be
heard,
where
ideas
could
be
developed,
where
love
and
respect
is
shared,
and
where
I
spent
countless
hours
thesising.
and
thank
you
to
all
those
who
been
acting
womanish.
2
Forward
People,
We
have
created
you
all
male
and
female
and
have
made
you
races
and
tribes
so
that
you
would
recognize
each
other.
The
most
honorable
among
you
in
the
sight
of
God
is
the
most
pious
of
you.
God
is
All‐knowing
and
All‐aware.
(49:13)
I
like
this
quote
from
the
Quran
because
it
speaks
to
the
reality
of
difference,
a
difference
that
refers
to
many
markers—sexual,
racial,
national,
religious,
geographic,
local,
global,
etc,
and,
with
the
ceremony
of
sacred/divine
mystery,
discloses
intention.
This
intention
is
the
continuous,
paradoxical,
messy
business
of
recognizing
(also
translated
as
knowing)
each
other,
the
other.
Many
times
when
performing
politics
we
are
taught
to
see
difference
as
divisive,
rather
than
as
opportunities
to
be
in
suspense
and
be
creative.
I
never
intended
to
be
a
religious
studies
major.
But
it
proved
an
apt
discipline
to
study
the
situations
and
experiences
of
my
own
life.
The
insights
I
have
gained
have
aided
in
my
personal
project
of
thinking
about
Islam
in
relation
to
American
history
and
structures
of
power.
They
have
even
nuanced
my
understanding
in
internal
Muslim
dialogues
when
thinking
about
inclusivity
and
radical
subjectivity.
As
my
professors
have
pointed
out,
the
discursive
relationship
of
religion
with
other
disciplines,
discourses,
and
concepts,
has
shown
how
various
constructions
are
overdetermined,
relational,
and
are
shaped
by
other
political,
institutional,
and
material
interests.
Thus,
my
eyes
have
been
open
into
how
these
relationships
(re)produce
and
negotiate
race,
class,
gender,
etc.
3
Why
do
I
choose
to
recognize
the
work
of
African
American
Muslim
women?
As
an
American
Muslim
woman
of
mixed
heritage,
I
have
had
to
undergo
my
own
negotiations
when
it
comes
to
how
I
inhabit
norms
and
balance
various
commitments.
It
is
becoming
increasingly
clear
to
me
that
different
aspects
of
my
identity
are
constructed
and
the
ways
people
view
them,
are
to
some
extent,
imposed
upon
me.
In
many
ways
I
will
be
relating
to
this
thesis
as
a
simultaneous
cultural
insider
and
cultural
outsider.
The
stakes
of
what
it
means
to
retheorize
within
the
Islamic
tradition
and
the
negotiation
of
difference
is
of
huge
importance.
As
an
American,
thinking
of
Islam
as
indigenous
to
the
United
States
and
not
some
foreign,
and
often
demonized,
identity
plays
a
huge
role
in
my
interest
in
early
African
American
Muslim
communities.
In
conjunction
to
this,
I
find
tremendous
value
in
the
Black
Radical
Tradition—
that
old
spirit
that
has
emerged
from
collective
African
experience—which,
we
may
find
out
is
not
necessarily
“black”
or
“radical.”
I
see
this
influence
in
the
creative
writings
of
bell
hooks,
Amina
Wadud,
Sherman
Jackson,
Delores
Williams,
C.
Robinson,
among
others.
This
tradition
challenges
Eurocentrism
and
the
Enlightenment
paradigm,
which
has
dominated
political
discourse
and
our
ways
of
knowing
each
other.
Finally,
my
work
as
a
feminist,
activist,
and
student
has
pointed
out
there
cannot
be
one
type
of
dress
code,
one
cookie‐cutter
liberation
movement,
or
one
way
to
express
one’s
piety.
I
realize
being
Muslim
AND
feminist
are
not
a
mutually
exclusive
concept,
but
am
learning
to
continuously
interrogate
both
of
those
identities.
I
see
this
thesis
as
a
developing
paper
that
explores
various
ideas
that
have
challenged
me
to
think
more
critically,
openly,
and
poetically.
What
is
significant
is
that
4
it
is
my
own.
These
ideas
influence
my
scholarship,
my
spirituality,
my
well‐being,
and
my
sense
of
hope.
One
could
say
a
commonality
that
the
subjects
of
my
thesis
have
are
that
they
are
discontents.
But
that
very
space
of
dissatisfaction—of
racial
violence,
of
gender
oppression,
of
misery
produced
by
the
global
economy—of
hypocrisy,
misunderstanding,
misrecognition—is
the
space
for
genuine
self‐examination
and
exchange,
where
dreams
are
dared
to
be
pursued,
and
(radical)
change
is
demanded.
Sara
5
Chapter
1
Introduction
This
thesis
explores
both
limits
and
possibilities.
It
reflects
on
processes
of
appropriation,
resignification
and
critique
as
practiced
variably
by
African
American
Muslim
women.
I
situate
these
processes
within
the
concept
of
multiple
critique,
for
specifically
three
moments—Sherman
Jackson’s
Third
Resurrection,
the
black
feminist
tradition,
and
Islamic
feminisms.
African
American
Muslim
women
are
creating
a
multilayered
discourse
that
interrogates
individuals,
institutions,
traditions,
and
other
discourses
that
are
insufficient,
oppressive,
and
marginalizing.
These
interrogations,
which
unpack
privilege,
are
balanced,
and
often
strengthen,
their
Islamic
loyalties.
As
I
develop
my
own
ethics
and
politics
it
is
important
for
me
to
be
suspensive
and
open
and
recognize
the
possibility
of
retheorizations
and
reevaluations,
while
still
being
committed
to
my
own
politics
of
reading
Islam
as
a
counter‐hegemonic
faith.
Thus
the
conversations
between
black
radicalism,
feminist
theory,
and
Islam
provide
avenues
and
strategies
for
thinking
in
oppositional
and
in
solidarity.
miriam
cooke
calls
these
oppositional
stances
multiple
critique.
Multiple
Critique
6
miriam
cooke’s
multiple
critique
is
the
interaction
between
the
two
concepts
of
double
critique
Abdelkebir
Khatibi
and
multiple
consciousness
Deborah
King.1
Khatibi,
in
the
context
of
French
colonial
presence
in
North
Africa,
uses
the
dual
consciousness
of
the
postcolonial
subject
as
a
site
of
opposition
and
critique.
Dual
consciousness
is
processed
through
interrogation
of
the
“the
double
negative
hermeneutic”
of
self‐
colonization
and
self‐victimization.2
This
articulation
of
oppositional
discourse
talks
back
to
both
local
and
global
antagonists.
cooke
inserts
gender
as
a
third
site
with
a
multitude
of
antagonist
including
“religious
zealots
and
religious
others,
foreigners,
homophobes,
and
women
with
different
histories.”3
King’s
multiple
consciousness
expands
on
W.E.B.
Dubois’s
double
consciousness
thesis
and
shows
how
the
“multiple
jeapardies”
of
black
women
being
marginalized
by
the
women’s
movement
and
black
liberation
create
multiple
consciousness.
“The
importance
of
any
one
factor
in
explaining
black
women’s
circumstances
thus
varies
depending
on
the
particular
aspects
of
our
lives
under
consideration
and
the
reference
groups
to
whom
we
are
compared.”4
Cooke
uses
this
concept
as
a
rhetorical
stance
shared
by
Islamic
feminists.
She
distinguishes
between
consciousness
and
critique
and
how
“Islamic
feminists
find
ways
1
miriam
cooke,
Women
Claim
Islam:
Creating
Islamic
Feminism
Through
Literature
(New
York:
Routledge,
2001),
109.
2
Mustapha
Hamil
“Interrogating
Idenity:
Abdelkebir
Khatibi
and
the
Postcolonial
Prerogative”
Alif:
Journal
of
Comparative
Poetics
(2002)
http://www.jehat.com/Jehaat/en/RecentTitlesonArabicLiterature/Mustapha‐Hamil.htm
3
cooke,
110.
4
Deborah
King,
“Multiple
Jeopardy,
Multiple
Consciousness:
The
Context
of
a
Black
Feminist
ideology,”
in
Words
of
Fire:
An
Anthology
of
African
American
Feminist
Thought,
ed.
Beverly
Guy‐Sheftall
(New
York:
The
New
Press,
1995)
297‐298.
7
to
move
from
multiple
consciousness
to
multiple
critique.”5
These
concepts
are
also
a
move
from
identity
politics,
which
focusing
on
the
identity
of
the
subject,
can
lead
to
authorizing
discourses
and
essentialism
that
displace
others.
Multiple
critique
is
not
a
fixed
authorizing
mechanism
but
a
fluid
discursive
strategy
taken
up
from
multiple
speaking
positions.
It
allows
for
conversations
with
many
interlocutors
on
many
different
topics.
Unlike
identity
politics,
which
depends
on
an
essentialized
identity,
multiple
critique
allows
for
identitarian
contradictions
that
respond
to
other’s
silencing
moves.6
This
concept
allows
one
to
stay
in
a
community
while
criticizing
it
and
opens
possibilities
for
alliance
and
networking.
Invisible
Muslimah
“We
are
Muslim
women
too
and
we’re
not
invisible.”
Faith
Precious
Rasheedah
Muhammad
articulates
in
her
essay
her
strong
communal
and
social
justice
sensibility
growing
up
within
an
African
American
Muslim
community.
After
interacting
with
other
Muslims
or
what
she
calls
“coreligionists”
she
realized
that
other
factors
characterized
her
relationships
with
other
people
and
with
God.
Muhammad
could
not
“just
be
a
Muslim”
or
feel
that
she
was
interacting
with
equal
privilege.
Her
experience
of
being
an
African
American
Muslim
woman
was
one
of
a
minority,
on
multiple
levels.7
In
Jamillah
Karim’s
ethnographic
discussion
groups,
where
she
aims
to
lift
the
voice
of
the
underrepresented
(“method
from
the
margins”),
she
notes
that
the
African
American
female
voice
of
struggle
is
marked
by
the
overlap
of
oppressions
and
captures
5
cooke,
113.
Ibid.
7
Precious
Rasheedah
Muhammad,
“To
be
Young,
Gifted,
Blak,
American,
Muslim,
and
Woman,”
in
Living
Islam
Out
Loud:
American
Muslim
Woman
Speak,
ed.
Saleemah
Abdul‐Ghafur
(Boston:
Beacon
Press
Books,
2005),
43.
6
8
the
multiple,
complex,
and
shifting
identities
Muslims
hold.
The
words
of
Melanie,
an
African
American
Muslim
woman
Karim
talks
to,
voices
the
overlapping
discriminations
she
faces
within
and
outside
of
the
Muslim
community.
“I’m
seen
as
an
African
American
before
I’m
seen
as
a
Muslim
American.
I’m
seen
as
an
African
American,
then
a
woman,
then
a
Muslim,
for
whatever
reasons
or
prejudices
other
people
have.”8
To
further
exacerbate
the
marginalized
feelings
of
Melanie,
the
other
Muslim
women
in
her
discussion
group
who
do
not
identify
as
black,
feel
that
Melanie
is
self
segregating
and
divisive,
attributing
her
feelings
as
false
consciousness.9
As
Muslim
women
may
deal
with
gender
erasure,
African
American
Muslim
women
also
deal
with
racial
erasure,
a
sentimental
idea
that
religions
traditionally
hold.10
With
the
already
problematic
depictions
of
Muslims
in
the
media,
or
gender
disparity
when
it
comes
to
leadership
positions
in
religious
centers,
African
American
Muslim
women
are
often
subjected
to
invisibility.
According
to
Kimberle
Crenshaw,
"Because
the
intersectional
experience
is
greater
than
the
sum
of
racism
and
sexism,
any
analysis
that
does
not
take
intersectionality
into
account
cannot
sufficiently
address
the
particular
manner
in
which
Black
women
are
subordinated."11
As
such
the
needs
and
experiences
of
women
who
traverse
these
intersections
are
not
being
met
or
recognized,
which
causes
Muslim
communities
to
neglect,
gloss
over,
or
exacerbate
internal
injustices
and
silencing.
8
Jamillah
Karim
“To
Be
Black,
Female,
and
Muslim:
A
Candid
Conversation
about
Race
in
the
American
Ummah,”
Journal
of
Muslim
Minority
Affairs
26,
no.
2
(August
2006),
228.
9
Ibid.,
227.
10
bell
hooks,
Black
Looks:
Race
and
Representation
(Boston:
South
End
Press,
1992),
12.
11
Kimberle
Crenshaw,
"Demarginalizing
the
Intersection
of
Race
and
Sex,"
University
of
Chicago
Legal
Forum,
139
(1989).
9
People
get
upset
with
me
because
I
defend
my
right
to
be
heard,
to
be
able
to
speak
freely,
to
be
able
to
be
seen
as
a
woman,
as
pretty
and
feminine
and
not
slutty
and
just
poor
and
black
and
nasty.
People
are
afraid
of
me
because
I
encapsulate
everything
that
the
world
overall
is
unhappy
and
afraid
of.
They
are
afraid
of
femininity,
the
power
of
being
a
woman.
People
are
afraid
of
African
American
people.
They
are
afraid
of
people
of
my
descent,
whether
it
be
Ethiopian,
African
American,
South
African,
Nigerian,
Ghanaian,
or
whatever.
And
people
are
afraid
of
Muslim
people.
That’s
why
I’m
treated
the
way
I’m
treated
wherever
I
go,
whatever
masjid,
whatever
city,
whatever
grocery
store,
period.12
Melanie
voices
her
experiences
of
marginalization
because
of
social
anxiety
emanating
from
heightened
gender
and
racial
awareness,
where
communities
seem
to
prefer
to
not
confront
the
presence
of
empowered
Muslim
women
of
African
descent.
Karim
locates
multiple
sites
of
oppression,
not
just
internally
but
also
spatially—
“wherever
I
go,
whatever
masjid,
whatever
city,
whatever
grocery
store.”
For
African
American
Muslim
women,
sexism
is
encountered
not
only
in
Muslim
immigrant
communities
but
also
in
the
black
community
and
the
dominant
white
American
communities
at
large.
In
addition,
racism
is
not
only
encountered
in
American
mainstream
society,
with
its
already
tense
race
relations,
but
in
the
Muslim
community
where
race
dynamics
are
not
problematized
due
to
lofty
universal
ideals
of
Muslim
identity
where
being
Muslim
and
spiritually
equal
is
all
that
matters.
These
multiple
sites,
along
with
Crenshaw’s
statement
about
the
intersectional
experience
indicate
that
positing
struggles
between
male
and
female,
blackness
and
whiteness,
is
too
reductive.
In
addition,
Melanie
relates
to
us
that
not
only
African
Americans
are
12
Karim
“To
Be
Black,
Female,
and
Muslim,”
230‐231.
10
oppressed,
but
indicates
the
reality
of
multiple
identities
and
the
paradox
of
the
color
line,
which
complicate
gender,
race,
and
civil
liberties
struggles
in
America.13
"Most
often,
the
matter
of
gender
hegemony
is
referred
to,
although
not
integrated
and
certainly
not
resolved,
as
progressive
Islam.
Matters
of
class
or
racial
hegemony
receive
less
direct
attention."14
Amina
Wadud,
known
for
concept
of
gender
jihad
and
female‐inclusive
interpretations
of
the
Quran,
points
out
the
lack
of
articulation
of
race
in
global
Islamic
feminist,
and
progressive
movements.
Perhaps
it
is
this
dynamic
that
leads
Melanie
to
identify
more
with
racial
marginalization
as
opposed
to
female‐exclusivity.
This
reality
of
triple
minority
status,
or
struggle
against
multiple
fronts
of
oppression,
is
what
makes
the
diverse
voices
of
African
American
Muslim
women
significant
in
being
critical
about
the
multiple
hegemonic
power
relationships
in
the
Muslim
community,
and
the
American
community
at
large.
Aisha
al‐Adawiya
discusses
how
African
American
Muslim
women
are
a
“rare
gift,”
due
to
their
historical
reference
and
experience
in
addressing
issues
of
oppression
and
struggle
for
liberation
and
opportunity.
They
are
engaged
and
have
relationships
with
those
who
oppress
and
those
who
strive
for
liberation.
With
this
reference
and
experience
with
this
contradiction,
African
American
women
are
in
the
unique
position
to
struggle
for
social
justice
for
Muslims
and
Americans
We
knew
that
we
could
be
powerful
because
of
our
spirituality
–
not
in
spite
of
it.
We
carry
the
scars
of
centuries
of
enslavement
and
the
residual
effects
that
13
Ibid.,
231.
Amina
Wadud,
“American
Muslim
Identity:
Race
and
Ethnicity
in
Progressive
Islam,”
Progressive
Muslims:
On
Justice,
Gender,
and
Pluralism,
ed.
Omid
Safi
(Oxford:
Oneworld
Publications,
2003),
271.
14
11
persist
to
this
day.
We
have
lost
–
and
continue
to
lose
–
our
children
and
loved
ones
to
pernicious
institutional
racism
manifested
through
policies
of
abuse
and
neglect,
such
as
economic
deprivation,
criminalisation
of
our
youth,
substandard
health
care,
and
inferior
education.
Based
on
these
experiences,
we
can
offer
lessons
learned
to
Muslim
immigrants
struggling
to
realise
the
promises
America
makes
to
new
arrivals.15
The
social
location
of
a
person
is
important
in
understanding
the
political
nature
of
their
work,
and
being
a
African
American
woman
has
historically
and
presently
elucidated
certain
circumstances
and
situations.
Although
there
is
no
authentic,
essential
African
American
Muslim
woman’s
experience
due,
there
are
some
similarities
that
can
be
drawn
out
due
to
certain
systematical
historical
oppressions.
As
Patricia
Hill
Collins
states,
“This
connection
between
experience
and
consciousness
that
shapes
the
everyday
lives
of
all
African
American
women
pervades
the
works
of
Black
women
activists
and
scholars.”16
Different
meanings
of
what
it
means
to
be
American,
Western,
Muslim,
Black,
Women
of
Color,
Feminist
(black,
Islamic,
womanist)
can
shape
one’s
vision
of
oneself
and
out
of
which
one
must
extract
meaning
that
they
could
recognize
as
their
own.
From
this
process,
one
can
simultaneously
claim
and
challenge,
disrupting
the
hegemony
of
different
forms
of
representations
and
totalizations,
providing
new
avenues
of
participation,
commitment,
recovery,
and
membership.
Here
I
try
to
explore
some
of
the
multivalences
of
works
by
African
American
Muslim
women
and
the
ways
that
an
Islamic
framework
can
be
employed
as
a
method
of
social
justice
and
change.
15
Aisha
H.L.
al‐Adawiya,
“African
American
Muslim
women
are
a
rare
gift,”
Common
Ground
News
Service,
June
3
2008,
http://www.commongroundnews.org/article.php?id=23271&lan=en&sid=1&sp=1&isNew=0
16
Patricia
Hill
Collins,
Black
Feminist
Thought:
Knowledge,
Consciousness,
and
the
Politics
of
Empowerment
(New
York:
Routledge,
1990),
25.
12
Each
work
presented
has
a
place
within
the
larger
discourses
in
which
they
were
written,
and
reflect
serious
forces
at
work.
I
explore
three
moments
and
read
them
in
conversation
identifying
some
of
these
forces.
These
conversations
present
possible
sites
of
self‐authentification
and
change
while
accounting
for
the
discourses
that
describe
and
prescribe
them.
13
Chapter
2
Third
Resurrection
“Not
until
the
condition
of
my
people
changes.”
Malcolm
X
“Truly,
God
does
not
change
the
condition
of
a
people
until
they
change
what
is
in
themselves.”
Quran
13:11
Muslims
believe
that
Prophet
Muhammad
(c.570‐632),
at
the
age
of
40,
began
to
receive
revelations
from
the
divine.
Within
a
century,
the
Islamic
tradition
spread
through
an
empire.
Today,
it
is
the
second
largest
religion
in
the
world.
Tradition
functions
and
relates
with
the
past,
the
present,
and
the
future.
It
is
historically
evolving,
characterized
by
its
own
rationality
and
embodied
practice
and
its
interactions
with
other
discourses.
The
concept
of
religion
as
“discursive
tradition”
is
an
apt
way
to
think
about
black
routes
to
Islam
in
America,
especially
when
contextualizing
how
this
religious
tradition
interacts
with
other
traditions
and
discourses.
By
thinking
of
Islam
as
not
historically
fixed
but
having
a
history
that
informs
how
subjects
participate
in
the
tradition,
“the
past
[becomes]
the
very
ground
through
which
the
subjectivity
and
self‐
understanding
of
a
tradition’s
adherents
are
constituted.”17
I
choose
to
think
about
Islam
in
this
way,
as
specific
definitions
of
Islam
have
different
limiting
or
enlarging
potential
when
thinking
about
pluralism
within
groups
who
call
themselves
Muslim.
This
allows
me
to
think
about
Islam
in
terms
of
processes
of
inheritance,
appropriation,
and
authorization.
17
Saba
Mahmood,
Politics
of
Piety:
The
Islamic
Revival
and
the
Feminist
Subject,
(New
Jersey:
Princeton
University
Press,
2007),
115.
14
The
purpose
of
this
chapter
is
to
partially
situate
African
American
Muslim
women
within
what
scholar
Sherman
Jackson
calls
the
Third
Resurrection.
As
such,
a
brief
introduction
to
black
routes
of
Islam
and
its
articulation
of
what
it
means
to
be
black,
American,
and
Muslim
is
relevant
to
contextualizing
the
work
of
African
American
Muslim
women.
What
does
the
Third
Resurrection
refer
to?
Thinking
about
it
chronologically,
the
First
Resurrection
was
the
period
before
1975,
the
year
when
the
Honorable
Elijah
Muhammad
died.
The
Second
Resurrection
is
the
period
afterwards
during
the
leadership
of
Warithudeen
(W.D.)
Muhammad
and
Louis
Farrakhan.
The
First
Resurrection
marks
the
transition
of
blacks
into
“proto‐Islamic”
groups,
many
leaving
Christian
churches
for
organizations
such
as
the
Moorish
Science
Temple,
Ahmadi
Muslim
mosques,
the
Islamic
Brotherhood/State
Street
Mosque
of
Brooklyn,
the
Addeynu
Allahe
Universal
Arabic
Association,
the
Fahamme
Temple
of
Islam
and
Culture,
the
First
Mosque
of
Pittsburgh,
and
the
Nation
of
Islam
(NOI).
The
Second
Resurrection
marks
the
leadership
of
W.D.
Muhammad,
who
adopted
more
mainstream
Sunni
teachings,
and
remaining
leaders
of
particularistic
“proto‐Islamic”
traditions
such
as
Louis
Farrakhan
(NOI).18
Charismatic
and
significant
leadership
characterized
both
of
these
resurrections.
Accordingly,
the
Third
Resurrection
marks
the
emerging
reality
in
which,
“whatever
future
Islam
has
in
black
America
will
be
one
in
which
the
authenticating
agent
is
almost
certain
to
be
the
structured
discourse
of
Sunni
Tradition.”19
18
Sherman
Jackson,
Islam
and
the
Black
American:
Looking
Toward
the
Third
Resurrection,
(Oxford:
University
Press,
2005),
6.
19
Ibid.
15
The
transitioning
that
Jackson
sees
occurring
concerns
a
different
approach
to
Islam
that
joins
the
larger
world
community
of
what
he
calls
“Sunni
orthodox”
Islam,
while
at
the
same
time
speaking
out
with
a
distinctively
Blackamerican
voice.
He
posits
the
need
for
a
Third
Resurrection
where
Blackamerican
Muslims
need
to
both
master
and
appropriate
mainstream
Muslim
traditions
so
that
they
are
not
dominated
by
them.
This
would
avoid
being
narrowly
construed
as
a
prototypical
black
“protest”
religion
and
actually
become
a
space
where
Blackamerican
Muslims
can
emerge
as
“self‐
authenticating
subjects”
instead
of
“dependent
objects.”
Jackson
believes
that
Blackamerican
Muslims
can
find
the
resources
to
reconcile
being
black,
American,
and
Muslim
within
the
Islamic
tradition.
This
description
and
directive
is
helpful,
especially
in
relation
to
Blackamerican
Muslim
woman’s
voices,
as
it
is
able
to
talk
about
race
within
the
mainstream
Sunni
traditions
as
opposed
to
race‐consciousness
being
relegated
to
more
particular
religious
expressions
such
as
the
NOI
and
Five
Percenters.
Jackson
explores
the
encounter
between
Islam
and
the
Blackamerican,
noting
that
the
presence
of
an
indigenous
Islam
in
America
owes
itself
to
the
phenomenon
of
Black
Religion,
“a
pragmatic,
folk‐oriented,
holy
protest
against
anti‐black
racism”
that
emerged
out
of
the
experience
of
American
slavery.20
Given
the
particularism
of
black
religious
experience
in
America
and
consequent
interpretation
of
being
Muslim,
Jackson
points
out
the
evolution
of
and
present
articulations
of
what
it
means
to
be
black
and
Muslim
in
the
specific
context
of
American
whiteness,
immigrant
Islam,
and
Sunni
20
Ibid.,
4.
16
orthodoxy.
Part
of
the
anxiety
that
fuels
his
scholarship
is
that
the
Blackamerican
Muslim
today
has
lost
definition
of
Islam
to
immigrant
Muslim
authorities.
But
Jackson
points
out
that
the
Sunni
tradition
as
imported/authorized
by
Muslim
immigrants
was/is
attached
to
“false
universals,”
“the
phenomenon
of
history
internalized,
normalized,
and
then
forgotten
as
history,”
and
the
judgment
of
others
based
on
universalized
particular
experience.21
Given
that
Black
Religion
manifested
as
a
communal
tool
to
combat
racism
and
compose
a
black
identity,
immigrant
Muslims
found
themselves
at
odds
with
not
white
supremacy
but
the
“West,”
their
struggle
not
characterized
by
race
but
a
religious,
imperialist
threat.
Confronted
with
this
reality,
Blackamerican
Muslims
faced
the
added
challenge
of
finding
their
voice
within
not
only
a
white
supremacist
society
but
in
historical
Islam.
Community,
Nation‐building,
and
Group‐consciousness
We
have
been
captured,
and
we
labor
to
make
our
getaway,
into
the
ancient
image;
into
a
new
Correspondence
with
ourselves
and
our
Black
family.
We
need
magic
now
we
need
the
spells,
to
raise
up
return,
destroy,
and
create.
What
will
be
the
sacred
word?
Amiri
Baraka
From
Ka’ba
Timothy
Drew,
or
Noble
Drew
Ali,
founded
the
Moorish
Science
Temple
(MST)
in
Chicago,
establishing
temples
in
different
locations.
Although
Drew
incorporated
Islamic
symbols,
much
of
tradition
borrowed
elements
from
Freemasonry,
which
21
Ibid.,
9.
17
already
had
an
Oriental
streak.
Drew
rejected
the
signifier
Negro
and
urged
his
following
to
identify
as
Moorish
as
he
believed
that
Blackamericans
had
a
rich
religious
heritage
that
was
lost
during
slavery.22
The
MST
focused
on
concepts
of
justice,
purposeful
creation,
freedom
of
will,
and
people
as
a
generator
of
action.
They
also
took
political
stances
like
not
serving
in
the
military.
They
were
in
part,
"a
nationalistic
response
to
America's
racism
and
to
the
sense
of
confusion
that
enveloped
them
after
the
end
of
slavery
and
the
beginning
of
the
migration
of
blacks
from
the
southern
states
to
the
north."23
This
atmosphere
created
avenues
for
community
building.
Drew
constructed
Moorish
Science
in
nationalistic/cultural
terms
rather
than
racialism,
a
move
that
would
signify
a
common
history,
belief
system,
and
value
system.
The
MST
had
its
own
practices,
book,
and
prophet,
filling
in
the
void
of
having
limited
or
no
access
to
many
Islamic
texts
or
hadith.
This
community
had
a
large
service
component
in
terms
of
actively
caring
for
the
poor
and
opening
rehabilitation
centers.
They
also
believed
in
self‐sufficiency,
encouraging
economic
diligence
and
independence.24
Another
encounter
between
Islam
and
Blackamericans
was
through
the
Ahmadiyya
movement,
which
actually
originated
in
India.
This
religious
community
had
a
large
missionary
and
religious
activism
component,
which,
through
its
newspapers
and
hadith
literature,
introduced
"systematic
Islamic
study
that
had
no
reference
to
nationalism."25
The
Ahmadiyya
movement
is
probably
the
only
Muslim
community
that
22
Edward
E.
Curtis
IV,
Islam
in
Black
America:
identity,
liberation,
and
difference
in
African‐American
Islamic
thought,
(New
York:
SUNY
Press,
2002),
45.
23
Amina
Beverly
McCloud,
African
American
Islam
(New
York:
Routledge,
1994),
11‐12.
24
Ibid.,
17.
25
Ibid.,
19.
18
committed
resources
to
spreading
Islam
in
the
early
parts
of
the
century.26
The
community
has
an
international
character
even
though
its
membership
was
most
Blackamerican,
including
many
jazz
musicians.
However,
even
though
the
community
worked
for
social
justice
and
was
against
racism,
Blackamericans
were
typically
not
appointed
as
missionaries
and
many
exited.
In
addition,
the
community
was
culturally
specific
in
the
many
ways
Indian
customs
were
emphasized.27
The
Islamic
Mission
of
America,
started
by
Shaykh
Dauod
Ahmed
Faisal,
attempted
to
reconcile
being
black,
being
American,
and
being
Muslim.
Although
it
emphasized
black
reclamation,
it
also
supported
American
allegiance
and
had
ties
to
the
larger
Muslim
community.
There
was
also
an
emphasis
on
education
regarding
adab,
etiquette
in
which
customs
surrounding
family
and
gender
were
solidified.28
The
Nation
of
Islam,
which
is
what
most
people
think
about
when
they
think
about
historical
black
Islam,
was
founded
by
Wali
Fard
Muhammad.
Elijah
Muhammad,
following
the
prophetic
tradition
in
Black
Religion
became
prophet
to
"the
so‐called
Negro”
and
translated
Fard’s
ideas,
shaping
the
NOI.
He
was
interested
in
building
a
nation
and
in
the
purification
of
the
mind,
body,
and
spirit.
The
community,
like
other
Black
Muslim
communities,
was
often
accused
of
heresy.
Elijah
is
reported
to
have
said
in
response
to
these
claims,
“My
brothers
in
the
East
were
never
subject
to
conditions
of
slavery
and
systematic
brainwashing
by
the
slave
masters
for
as
long
a
period
of
time
as
my
people
here
were
subjected.
I
cannot,
therefore,
blame
them
if
they
differ
with
26
Curtis,
92.
McCloud,
20‐21.
28
Ibid.,
22‐23.
27
19
me
in
certain
interpretations
of
the
Message
of
Islam.”29
Sherman
Jackson
deems
this
history
until
Elijah
Muhammad
died
the
First
Resurrection,
probably
due
to
the
particularistic
appropriations
of
Islam
as
an
expression
of
Black
Religion.
The
Second
Resurrection
begins
after
Elijah
Muhammad’s
death
because
of
the
transformations
his
son
W.D.
Muhammad
facilitated.
W.D.
Muhammad
questioned
the
legitimacy
of
his
father’s
teachings
and
when
he
became
successor,
reinterpreted
those
teachings,
carrying
out
various
Sunni
reforms.
He
sought
closer
ties
with
other
Muslim
communities
and
with
Christian
black
leaders
and
even
invited
white
people
to
join
the
Nation.
Though
he
still
operated
under
a
group
identity,
he
asserted
the
primacy
of
Sunni
teachings
and
norms,
working
to
incorporate
the
black
community
within
American
and
Islamic
history
while
formulating
an
interpretation
of
Islam
specific
to
the
needs
of
the
black
community.30
Some
Particularities
This
disconnect
that
occurs
between
black
Muslim
communities
and
immigrant
communities
with
their
respective
historical
connections
can
be
explained
by
the
two
Islamic
concepts
that
Aminah
McCloud,
one
of
the
African
American
Muslim
woman
voices
recognized
in
this
thesis,
uses.
After
McCloud
draws
out
what
she
believes
are
some
basics
about
Islam
such
as
submission
to
divine
will,
revelation
of
the
Quran,
discipline
through
core
practices,
she
adds
two
more
concepts
to
this
Islamic
worldview
as
expressed
in
African
American
communities.
These
are
asabiya
and
ummah.
Asabiya
is
in
reference
to
kinship
relations
that
are
expressed
through
tribal
solidarities,
29
Ibid.,
28‐32
Curtis,
127.
30
20
common
ethics,
and
community
identity,
encompassing
for
McCloud
broader
group
affiliations
centered
in
culture
and
nationalism.
Ummah
describes
a
sense
of
community,
a
“community
of
believers,”
that
unifies
Muslims
across
different
identifiers.31
These
two
notions
are
usually
contemporarily
posited
as
in
conflict,
asabiya
even
branded
as
heretical.
McCloud
prefaces
her
scholarly
work
about
African
American
Islam
as
contingent
on
understanding
this
tension.
“African
American
Islamic
communities
can
be
understood
and
differentiated
largely
by
whether
they
grant
priority
to
nation‐building,
on
the
one
hand,
or
to
experience
of
the
ummah
and
participation
in
the
world
Islamic
community,
on
the
other.”32
The
first
half
of
the
century,
she
argues
is
when
African
American
Muslim
communities
focused
on
nation‐
building
and
the
second
half
when
ummah
is
more
prioritized.
Edward
E.
Curtis,
a
recognized
scholar
of
African
American
Islam,
frames
this
tension
as
the
discourse
characterized
by
both
universalisms
and
particularisms.
Although
he
overviews
Blackamerican
Muslim
history
within
the
two
concepts
and
points
out
how
Malcolm
X
is
a
figure
that
struggled
to
reconcile
the
two,
he
suggests
that
the
framework
of
Islamic
universalism
interacting
with
black
particularism
is
too
simple
and
ignores
historical
debates.
In
Islam’s
1400
year
history
even
at
the
time
of
the
Prophet,
particularism
was
a
constant
characteristic
in
terms
of
tribal
and
then
national
versions
of
ethnocentrism.
Thus
his
work
helps
to
establish
sects
like
the
NOI
as
legitimate
within
Islam.
Jackson
states,
“Many
Sunni
observers
view
proto‐Islamic
communities
as
blasphemous.
While
certainly
condemnable
from
the
standpoint
of
31
McCloud,
3‐4.
Ibid.,
5.
32
21
Muslim
orthodoxy,
these
infelicities
are
actually
no
more
outlandish
than
some
of
what
we
encounter
in
the
early
history
of
the
Muslim
world.”33
Islam
has
always
incorporated
diversity
and
multiculturalism.
However,
Jackson
calls
the
early
African
American
Islam
proto‐Islamic
and
refers
to
people
like
Noble
Drew
Ali
and
Fard
as
Islamizers.
Jackson
uses
language
of
proto
Islamic
and
irregularities
to
underscore
his
point
that
the
starting
point
of
the
spread
of
Islam
was
Black
Religion
appropriation
and
search
for
alternative
models/modality
of
blackness
as
opposed
to
spiritual
transformation
and
community.
McCloud
already
contributes
to
Jackson’s
Third
Resurrection
discourse
by
mastering
and
appropriating
Islamic
concepts
to
bring
up
race.
The
work
McCloud
does
is
minimize
the
differences
between
black
expressions
of
Islam
like
the
NOI
and
orthodox
Sunni
Muslims
by
attributing
how
important
asabiya
and
ummah
is
to
them.
McCloud
wants
to
challenge
the
idea
that
African
American
Muslim
communities
emerged
as
a
reaction
to
socioeconomic
setting
of
America
and
the
failure
of
Christian
churches.
She
says
that
“most
African
American
Muslims
would
consider
themselves
‘found’
in
Islam.”34
This
relates
to
Rouse
and
the
idea
that
Islam
was
an
epiphany
for
many
converts.
As
such,
McCloud
advocates
an
approach
to
their
study
through
the
context
of
an
Islamic
worldview
and
the
alliance
of
daily
struggles
with
Islamic
beliefs
and
principles.
The
distinction
is
important
for
understanding
the
ambivalence
of
fighting
local
struggles
and
desiring
international
legitimacy
and
religious
authenticity.
33
Jackson,
45.
McCloud,
166.
34
22
These
discussions
put
the
scholar
at
the
role
of
arbiter—to
identify
what
is
orthodox,
heretical,
or
normative
having
implications
on
who
can
claim
membership
to
a
tradition.
Can
Islam
encompass
a
bunch
of
particular
expression
of
Islam?
Is
anyone
who
calls
themselves
a
Muslim,
an
adherent
of
Islam?
What
qualifies
as
authentic
Islam?
To
define
it
is
to
have
power
over
the
concept
in
public
discourse,
as
the
ways
in
which
Muslims
understand
Islam
in
the
US
and
the
role
they
see
for
themselves
as
its
adherents
are
explored.
Islam
offers
a
particular
cosmological
understanding
of
a
guide
to
life
through
texts,
rituals,
institutions,
and
community.
People,
individuals,
shape
Islam
through
their
interpretations,
needs,
culture,
and
agenda.
Many
early
encounters
between
Islam
and
Blackamericans
emphasized
social
justice
as
the
highest
priority
after
tawhid,
doctrine
of
God’s
oneness.
The
makings
of
these
communities
show
nation‐building
or
group
consciousness
through
myths
of
origin,
industry,
spirituality,
and
moral
boundaries.35
“Conversion
meant
purification
from
the
pollution
of
white
supremacy
and
Eurocentrism
and
for
the
reclamation
of
an
authentic
social
and
spiritual
identity.
Although
less
significant,
the
identification
of
mainstream
ideology
with
pollution
and
oppression
remains
a
part
of
the
Sunni
community’s
ethic.”36
Jackson’s
move
of
explaining
black
religious
experience
as
Black
Religion
helps
to
demystify
Christocentricism
and
displaces
it
as
the
essential
religious
experience
of
African
Americans.
As
such,
one
can
understand
that
Christianity
and
Islam
functioned
35
Ibid.,
34.
Carolyn
Rouse,
Engaged
Surrender:
African
American
Women
and
Islam
(University
of
California
Press,
2004),
87.
36
23
more
like
conduits
of
the
religious
orientation
of
the
masses
and
key
to
sociopolitical
movements.
As
we
shall
see,
this
master
and
appropriations
makes
faith
primary
and
Islam
the
framework
to
work
out
contradiction
and
various
socioeconomic
oppressions
and
realities.
Conclusion
Sherman
Jackson
in
Islam
and
the
Blackamerican
describes
the
historical,
present,
and
potential
articulations
of
what
it
means
to
be
black
and
Muslim
in
the
context
of
American
whiteness,
Sunni
orthodoxy,
and
a
culturally
specific
immigrant
Islam
that
became
the
normative
representation
of
Islam.
He
urges
the
necessity
of
Blackamericans
to
master
and
appropriate
in
order
to
produce
knowledge
and
the
Sunni
tradition
instead
f
just
consume
and
be
dominated
by
it.
Jackson
represents
this
reconciliation
through
his
use
of
the
term
Blackamerican.
It
is
a
reclamation
of
American
but
also
points
out
to
the
history
of
ways
that
blacks
were
marginalized
and
treated
as
other.
The
work
Jackson
does
by
using
this
name
is
to
take
this
othering
and
compound
the
false
dualisms
constructed
along
racial
lines,
also
talking
back
to
the
construction
of
the
“Negro,”
an
ahistrical
and
undifferentiated
category
that
legitimated
violence,
dehumanization,
and
enslavement.
Accordingly,
Islam’s
early
encounters
in
America
was
a
result
of
Europe’s
intrusion
into
African
history.
As
Jackson
notes,
he
does
not
explore
the
difference
between
how
Blackamerican
Muslim
women
and
men
view
Black
Religion
and
the
Third
Resurrection
so
my
thesis
will
begin
to
fill
out
certain
gaps
that
deal
with
gender
performance
and
feminist
theories.
According
to
Jackson,
Islam
appealed
to
many
black
male
converts
24
whose
black
manhood
was
threatened
by
American
white
supremacy.37
Islam
presented
a
felicitous
resource
for
Black
Religion
to
appropriate
for
the
survival
and
protest
of
Blackamericans.
Like
other
responses
to
white
supremacy
and
struggles
of
racial
uplift,
early
black
indigenous
Islams
were
male‐dominated
and
male‐centered.
Gender
roles
were
prescribed
and
discourses
of
protest
and
spirituality
were
often
focused
on
the
black
male
experience.
For
example,
with
regards
to
the
Nation
of
Islam,
Jamillah
Karim
points
out
that
scholars
like
Michael
Gomez
have
described
how
women
were
reduced
through
biological
determinism
and
“seen
primarily
as
a
tool
of
procreation
and
reproduction.”38
Karim’s
article
“Through
Sunni
Women’s
Eyes:
Black
Feminism
and
the
Nation
of
Islam”
is
a
reevaluation
of
women’s
experience
and
agency,
recognizing
negative
sexist
analyses
but
making
room
to
locate
Blackamerican
Muslim
women
in
the
NOI
within
the
black
feminist
tradition.
In
the
history
of
Blackamericans
all
the
way
back
from
slavery,
women
have
been
an
important
part
of
emancipation,
protest,
liberation,
and
civil
rights
movements
often
struggling
on
multiple
fronts
against
racism,
sexism,
and
other
forms
of
oppression.
If
Blackamerican
Muslim
women
are
critically
engaged
in
articulating
a
nonpatriarchal
and
demasculinized
Islam,
where
do
they
fit
in
the
discourses
that
reinterpret
Islam
and
in
Sherman's
Third
Resurrection?
How
do
they
use
a
critical
feminist
consciousness
in
their
reinterpretation
of
Islam?
As
a
continued
conversation
of
“mastering
and
appropriation”
(of
Sunni
Islam),
what
kinds
of
appropriations
are
taking
place
regarding
feminism?
37
Jackson,
20.
quoted
in
Jamillah
Karim,
“Through
Sunni
Women’s
Eyes:
Black
Feminism
and
the
Nation
of
Islam.”
Souls
Journal
8,
no.
4
(Fall
2006),
20.
38
25
As
my
thesis
develops
it
will
recognize
the
different
ways
Blackamerican
Muslim
women
master
and
appropriate,
not
just
when
it
comes
to
Sunni
orthodoxy
but
in
relation
to
other
legacies
and
traditions
that
are
important
to
their
becoming
“self‐
authenticating
subjects.”
26
Chapter
3
BAMF:
Black
American
Muslim
Feminists
and
the
Black
Feminist
Tradition
“I
suppose
I
am
about
the
only
colored
woman
that
goes
about
to
speak
for
the
rights
of
the
colored
woman,
I
want
to
keep
the
thing
stirring,
now
that
the
ice
is
broken.”
Sojourner
Truth
(1867)
Sojourner
Truth
is
one
of
the
matriarchs
for
black
feminism.
She
articulates
how,
within
the
abolitionist
and
women’s
suffrage
movements,
“the
rights
of
the
colored
woman”
are
not
struggled
for.
Her
famous
speech
“Ain't
I
a
Woman?”
(1851)
highlights
the
discontinuities
with
regards
to
womanhood
at
the
time
period
noting
how
because
of
her
race
and
bondage,
she
was
not
helped
into
carriages
like
other
white
women
but
worked
hard
in
the
field
with
no
assistance
and
mothered
thirteen
children.
This
simple
question
troubles
not
only
what
it
means
to
be
a
black
woman,
but
of
womanhood
at
all.
It
is
this
legacy
of
black
feminism
going
back
to
the
documented
struggles
of
Sojourner
Truth,
Maria
Stewart39,
and
Ida
B.
Wells
in
the
19th
century
to
the
1960’s
with
the
Sexual
Revolution
and
the
Civil
Rights
and
black
liberation
movements,
that
I
hope
to
recognize
as
part
of
the
radical
subjectivity
of
African
American
Muslim
women,
who
“keep
the
thing
stirring.”
Like
the
Black
Radical
Tradition
and
black
liberation
politics,
black
feminism
was
done
long
before
there
was
a
term
for
it,
when
black
female
slaves
in
America
were
very
much
aware
of
the
multiple
oppressions
their
bodies
faced
for
39
“How
long
shall
the
fair
daughters
of
Africa
be
compelled
to
bury
their
minds
and
talents
beneath
a
load
of
iron
pots
and
kettles?”
27
being
black
and
female.
Early
African
American
women
spoke
out
like
Sojourner
Truth,
inspiring
generations
of
black
feminists
and
feminists
of
color
to
do
their
own
sojourning,
voicing
black
women’s
experiences
and
critiquing
multilayered
systems
of
power.
What
are
key
concepts
gleaned
from
black
feminist
theory
that
brings
spirit
to
the
work
of
African
American
Muslim
women?
How
do
African
American
Muslim
women
situate
themselves
within
black
feminist
discourses?
What
have
they
contributed
to
the
black
feminist
tradition?
I
hope
to
show
how
African
American
Muslim
women
are
complicating
black
womanhood
and
are
a
resource
to
black
feminist,
or
womanist,
theorizing.
Living
the
Intersection
and
Inherent
Value
"I
am
a
Black
Feminist.
I
mean
I
recognize
that
my
power
as
well
as
my
primary
oppressions
come
as
a
result
of
my
blackness
as
well
as
my
womaness,
and
therefore
my
struggles
on
both
of
these
fronts
are
inseparable."
Audre
Lorde
Black
feminism
emerged
from
the
starting
point
of
differentiating
and
intersecting
the
oppression
of
racism
and
sexism.
Racism
in
the
shape
of
white
supremacy
has
dehumanized,
subjugated,
and
oppressed
Blackamericans.
Sexism
has
done
violence
to
women’s
bodies
and
trapped
them
in
roles
based
on
biological
determinism
or
traditional
notions
of
gender.
As
early
black
feminists
critiqued
the
white‐dominated
and
white‐centered
first
and
second
wave
feminisms
and
also
the
patriarchy
within
the
black
community,
subject/object
positionality
has
been
complicated
where
white
feminists
can
be
seen
as
classist
and
racist
and
male
black
liberationists
can
be
sexist.
Appropriating
the
word
feminist,
black
feminists
attempt
to
28
unpack
the
privilege
and
work
towards
dismantling
all
interlocking
systems
of
oppression.
What
can
be
noticed
when
looking
at
the
history
of
feminism
(first‐,
second‐,
third‐wave)
and
the
work
by
black,
“third
world,”
and
queer
women
is
how
the
concept
and
politics
of
feminism
has
discursively
transformed,
allowing
more
inclusively,
complexity,
and
intersectionality
leading
to
alternative
approaches,
epistemologies,
and
(radical)
politics.
The
classic
essay
by
Frances
Beale,
“Double
Jeopardy:
To
Be
Black
and
Female”
addresses
the
double
oppression
of
race
and
gender.
Beale
talks
back
to
what
she
deems
as
counterrevolutionary
in
the
black
power
movements
where
black
masculinity
is
asserted
and
women
told
to
be
domesticated.
She
asserts
how
both
black
men
(who
have
been
lynched,
emasculated,
and
brutalized)
and
black
women
(who
have
been
sexually
molested,
abused,
and
scapegoated)
have
been
exploited
and
oppressed
and
how
black
women
have
contributed
to
the
struggle
for
liberation.
She
also
describes
the
necessity
of
the
white
women’s
movement
to
be
anti‐racist
and
anti‐imperialist
and
not
just
simply
attribute
their
oppression
to
male
chauvinism.
“If
the
white
groups
do
not
realize
that
they
are
in
fact
fighting
capitalism
and
racism,
we
do
not
have
common
bonds.
If
they
do
not
realize
that
the
reasons
for
their
condition
lie
in
the
system
and
not
simply
hat
men
get
vicarious
pleasure
out
of
‘consuming
their
bodies
for
exploitative
reasons’…then
we
cannot
unite
with
them…because
they’re
completely
29
irrelevant
to
the
black
struggle.”40
Beale
recognizes
that
black
women
have
specific
problems
that
need
to
be
talked
about
and
that
they
need
to
be
active
in
the
struggle.
Beale’s
essay
notes,
but
does
not
develop
how
race
and
sex
are
by
no
means
the
only
significant
markers
of
difference.
“Yet
class
structure
in
American
society
has
been
shaped
by
the
racial
politic
of
white
supremacy…”41
Conditions
in
the
political
economy
have
also
impacted
the
experiences
of
black
women.
Through
the
American
capitalist
economy,
African
Americans
have
been
exploited
by
slavery
and
racial
segregations.
Today
there
are
still
shocking
disparities
in
their
economic
position.
The
political
economies
of
capitalism
and
imperialism
have
been
articulated
by
black
feminists
as
sustaining
racism
and
patriarchy.42
However,
these
oppressions
are
not
additive
and
do
not
formulate
an
essential
group
experience.
For
example,
African
American
women
may
be
affected
by
institutional
racism,
but
their
social
class
influences
their
experiences
when
it
comes
to
housing,
employment,
or
education.43
According
to
Kimberle
Crenshaw,
"Because
the
intersectional
experience
is
greater
than
the
sum
of
racism
and
sexism,
any
analysis
that
does
not
take
intersectionality
into
account
cannot
sufficiently
address
the
particular
manner
in
which
Black
women
are
subordinated."44
As
such,
the
double
jeopardy
insight
has
been
enlarged
to
make
reference
to
other
forms
of
oppression
and
then
to
recognize
that
40
Frances
Beale,
“Double
Jeopardy:
To
Be
Black
and
Female”
in
Words
of
Fire:
An
Anthology
of
African
American
Feminist
Thought,
ed.
Beverly
Guy‐Sheftall
(New
York:
The
New
Press,
1995),
153.
41
Bell
hooks,
Black
Women:
Shaping
Feminist
Theory”
in
Words
of
Fire,
272.
42
Combahee
River
Collective
“A
Black
Feminist
Statement”
and
King
“Multiple
Jeopardy,
Multiple
Conciousness”
in
Words
of
Fire,
27,
311.
43
Collins,
Black
Feminist
Theory,
27.
44
Crenshaw,
"Demarginalizing
the
Intersection
of
Race
and
Sex."
University
of
Chicago
Legal
Forum,
139
(1989).
30
these
oppressions
interact
in
complex
ways.
Deborah
King
formulates
“multiple
jeopardy”
with
the
modifier
multiple
to
recognize
that
different
oppressions
do
not
function
in
an
additive
way.
Double
jeopardy
is
a
little
too
simplistic
and
is
not
sufficient
to
think
about,
for
example,
the
relationship
of
class
structure
and
white
supremacy,
or
religious
authority
and
race.
King’s
“Multiple
jeopardy,
Multiple
consciousness”
is
a
more
sufficient
model
to
articulate
black
women
concerns
and
helps
to
get
out
of
a
monistic
politics,
where
liberation
is
focused
on
one
oppression.
King’s
formulation
is
also
helpful
when
thinking
about
the
multiple
ways
of
subject
formation
for
black
women,
and
not
falling
into
the
trap
of
essentializing
or
homogenizing
black
womanhood.
“Consequently,
some
black
women
have
sought
an
association
with
feminism
as
one
alternative
to
the
limitations
of
monistic
race
politics.”45
To
push
this
further,
this
model
is
helpful
when
thinking
about
why
Islam
may
be
part
of
the
liberatory
politics
and
social
justice
ethic
for
some
African
American
Muslims
and
provide
a
starting
point
to
(re)evaluate
different
modalities
of
inhabiting
norms,
specifically
some
of
the
more
misunderstood
“Islamic”
practices
such
as
polygyny.
Another
important
part
of
King’s
thesis
is
“multiple
consciousness.”
Concentrating
on
the
multiple
jeopardies
or
oppressions
does
not
allow
much
creativity
and
agency
when
thinking
about
ways
subjects
like
black
women
are
not
victims.
Multiple
consciousnesses
emerges
through
the
complex
and
sometimes
ambiguous
45
King,
303.
31
interactions
between
different
forms
of
oppression.46
I
see
the
statement
by
the
Combahee
River
Collective
(CRC)
as
a
reflection
of
what
politics
out
of
multiple
consciousness
looks
like.
They
are
a
group
of
black
feminists
who
emphasized
the
role
of
black
lesbians
in
the
development
of
black
feminism.
They
looked
to
create
a
politics
that
was
not
monistic
and
saw
black
feminism
“as
the
logical
political
movement
to
combat
the
manifold
and
simultaneous
oppressions
that
all
women
of
color
face.”
They
introduce
this
as,
“The
most
general
statement
of
our
politics
at
the
present
time
would
be
that
we
are
actively
committed
to
struggling
against
racial,
sexual,
heterosexual,
and
class
oppression
and
see
as
our
particular
task
the
development
of
integrated
analysis
and
practice
based
upon
the
fact
that
the
major
systems
of
oppression
are
interlocking.”47
“you
acting
womanish”
There
have
been
debates
concerning
the
labels
of
feminism
and
womanism
and
what
they
mean
politically
and
ethically.
Womanism,
introduced
by
Alice
Walker,
functions
as
both
an
alternative
and
an
expansion
of
feminism.
Walker
writes,
“Womanist
is
to
feminist
as
purple
is
to
lavender.”48
It
was
coined
to
distinguish
black
feminists
or
feminists
of
color
from
a
women’s
movement
that
centered
on
issues
that
affected
middle‐class
white
women.
The
way
this
term
has
been
borrowed
and
appropriated
reflects
both
possibility
and
hegemony
or
totalization.
The
inclusion
of
this
discourse
is
important
in
light
of
the
self‐identity
of
many
African
American
religious
46
King,
312.
Combahee
River
Collective,
232.
48
Alice
Walker's
Definition
of
a
"Womanist"
from
In
Search
of
Our
Mother’s
Gardens:
Womanist
Prose
(New
York:
Continuum,
1983),
xi.
47
32
scholars
as
womanist,
the
hesitancy
of
other
black
feminist
to
use
this,
and
how
Debra
Majeed
uses
this
term
as
a
reference
point
for
her
emerging
paradigm
Muslim
Womanist
Philosophy.
In
addition,
the
“third
wave”
vision
of
Monica
Coleman
and
the
contemporary
work
of
others
in
reevaluating
the
term
will
be
important
to
discuss
especially
in
regards
to
interacting
across
multiple
scholarships,
which
I
argue
African
American
Muslim
women
are
doing.
In
a
roundtable
discussion,
Coleman
questions
whether
she
is
a
womanist
as
she
encountered
first
black
feminism
and
finds
them
different
in
important
ways.
She
points
out
that
there
seems
to
be
two
camps,
contingent
on
how
black
women
have
self‐identified‐‐‐the
womanists
being
Katie
Canon,
Dolores
Williams,
Emilie
Townes,
J.
Grant
and
the
black
feminists
being
Angela
Davis,
B.
GuySheftal,
Audre
Lorde,
bell
hooks,
and
Barbara
Smith.49
Womanism
has
been
used
in
secular
(i.e.
literary)
and
religious
ways.
Coleman
feels
that
the
“trajectory
of
womanist
religious
scholarship
has
left
me
in
a
house
without
enough
furniture.”
Her
issue
with
womanism
is
mainly
concerned
with
three
features:
heteronormativity,
Christocentrism,
and
lack
of
political
edginess.
“Without
giving
detailed
attention
to
the
issue
of
sexual
orientation,
womanists
paint
a
picture
of
black
women
as
sisters,
other‐mothers,
girlfriends,
and
church‐going
mothers,
when
there
s
much
more
to
the
picture.”50
This
does
a
great
disservice
to
womanist
politics
as
black
lesbians
have
been
active
and
vocal
in
black
feminism
and
constructing
a
politics
that
aims
to
dismantle
all
systems
of
domination.
49
Monica
Coleman
"Must
I
Be
Womanist?"
(Lead
Roundtable
article)
Journal
of
Feminist
Studies
in
Religion
22.1
(Spring
2006),
86.
50
Ibid.,
88.
33
Coleman
also
feels
that
womanist
scholarship
has
been
insufficient
“in
reflecting
the
religious
pluralism
of
back
women’s
faith
associations.”51
She
does
acknowledge
that
these
theologians
have
done
monumental
work
when
analyzing
sexism
within
the
Black
church,
highlighting
the
role
and
achievements
of
black
women,
introducing
new
metaphors
and
retheorizations,
and
struggling
to
make
black
womanhood
a
legitimate
subject/object
positionality.
Finally,
Coleman
responds
to
the
descriptive
rather
than
prescriptive
characteristic
of
womanism
as
she
interprets
it,
where
womanist
scholars
have
“taken
few
strong
political
stances.”52
To
put
it
in
anecdotal
terms,
when
I
tell
my
black
male
friends
that
I'm
a
womanist,
they
think
of
me
as
a
black
churchwoman,
which
I
sometimes
am.
When
I
tell
them
that
I
am
a
black
feminist,
they
get
a
little
uneasy,
because
they
start
to
wonder
if
I'm
aligned
with
lesbians,
if
I'm
going
to
question
their
power,
and
if
I'm
going
to
call
God
"She"—all
of
which
I
also
do.
I
find
the
word
feminist,
whether
modified
by
black
or
not,
to
have
the
disruptive
effect
that
I
want.53
The
work
of
scholars
like
Coleman,
benefiting
from
an
evolving
and
more
encompassing
feminist
theoretical
map
and
queer
studies,
work
beyond
just
identity
politics
and
attempt
to
disrupt
essentializing
unities
of
black
female
experience.
The
conversations
between
black
feminists
and
womanists
and
the
reevaluation
of
womanism
is
important
for
how
African
AM
Muslim
women
enter
this
discourse.
A
term
for
black
women
with
connotations
of
survival
and
community,
revolutionary
love
and
self‐love
is
attractive,
despite
how
some
womanist
scholars
and
theologians
have
conceptualized
it
and
the
contradictions
and
ambiguities
it
raises.
51
Ibid.,
88‐89.
Ibid.,
90.
53
Ibid.
52
34
In
February
of
2010,
Coleman
organized
a
conference
entitled
“Ain’t
I
a
Womanist
too?:
Third
Wave
Womanist
Religious
Thought.”
In
her
inaugural
lecture,
she
articulated
what
“third
wave”
womanist
religious
thought
looked
like.
“Third
wave
womanist
thought
focuses
away
from
the
identity
of
the
scholar
to
the
ideology
of
the
scholarship.”
It
benefits
from
other
waves
but
also
functions
as
a
point
of
departure.
She
flips
her
original
question
from
the
2006
roundtable
from
wondering
if
because
she
is
black
she
has
to
be
a
womanist
to
does
a
womanist
have
to
be
black.
As
such,
third
wave
womanist
religious
thought
will
have
convictions
but
not
be
dogmatic
with
a
totalizing
black
womanhood,
and
be
an
ideological
lens
that
recognizes
multiple
and
diverse
positions
of
consciousness
and
experience.
Coleman
sees
this
third
wave
as
valuing
the
politics
of
identity
and
of
self
naming
that
Walker
and
first
and
second
wave
womanists
have
valued,
but
interrogates
what
it
means
to
be
religious,
women,
and
black,
troubling
those
categories
and
how
they
have
been
represented.
Debra
Majeed
is
part
of
Coleman’s
Third
Wave
of
redefining
womanist
religious
scholarship
pointing
out
its
shortcomings
but
also
appropriating
it.
When
Majeed
encountered
womanism,
she
felt
it
was
a
term
she
could
identify
with.
She
relates
how
she
"caught
hold
of
the
term
and
never
looked
back”
even
though
she
had
“endure[d]
nights
of
intellectual
and
spiritual
jihad”
questioning
the
“utility
of
the
womanist
legacy
for
non‐Christian
women
attempting
to
name
themselves”
and
her
own
commitments
and
points
of
departure.
Feminism,
even
with
a
bell
hooks
introduction
and
the
movement
of
black
voices
from
margin
to
center,
"held
far
too
much
political
currency
35
that
excluded
black
female
experience.”54
Because
of
the
history
of
feminism
with
respect
to
liberation
not
being
extended
to
black
women,
and
because
racism
or
other
forms
of
domination
were
not
interrogated,
feminism
was,
and
still
is
for
some,
an
insufficient
label
and
does
not
accurately
represent
the
experiences,
values,
and
commitments
of
some
African
American
women.
Majeed’s
appropriation
of
the
term
has
been
evolutionary
and
transformative,
challenging
her
homophobia
and
“fundamentally
Christian,
approval‐seeking,
other
privileging
paradigm.”55
Her
commitment
to
study
Islam
with
a
suspensive
ethic
and
then
becoming
Muslim
necessitated
her
“to
act
womanish,”
echoing
Alice
Walker’s
definition
which
continues:
“Usually
referring
to
outrageous,
audacious,
courageous
or
willful
behavior.
Wanting
to
know
more
and
in
greater
depth
than
is
considered
"good"
for
one.”56
Majeed’s
womanism
hopes
to
maintain
a
threefold
allegiance
through
the
methodology
or
paradigm
of
Muslim
Womanist
Philosophy.
These
allegiances
are
1)
to
Islam
as
an
essential
part
of
identity
2)
to
the
Quran
as
a
source
of
teachings
about
creation,
the
divine,
ontology,
relationship
and
social
justice,
and
3)
to
African
American
women
who
have
been
invisible
in
larger
struggles
of
Muslim
women.57
Muslim
Womanist
Philosophy
moves
beyond
analyzes
of
black
male
intellectuals
(race),
feminist
intellectuals
(gender),
Christian
womanists
(faith)
as
it
interrogates
"knowledge
production,
history,
and
human
existence"
that
shape
African
American
54
Debra
Majeed,
“Womanism
Encounters
Islam:
A
Muslim
Scholar
Considers
the
Efficacy
of
a
Method
Rooted
in
the
Academy
and
the
Church,”
Deeper
Shades
of
Purple:
Womanism
in
Religion
and
Society
(New
York:
New
York
University
Press,
2006),
39.
55
Majeed,
“Womanism
Encounters
Islam,”
41.
56
Walker,
xi.
57
Majeed,
“Womanism
Encounters
Islam,”
43.
36
Muslim
experience,
interrogating
the
social
construction
of
that
experience.58
It
“fits
comfortably
within
a
diversifying
womanist
discourse”
while
challenging
it
though
speaking
to
multiple
consciousnesses
arising
from
being
Muslim,
American
citizens,
and
of
African
descent.
“The
method
responds
to
the
racist
and
patriarchal
culture
of
the
United
States
and
is
grounded
in
the
nuances
of
black
struggles
for
survival,
in
questions
for
Islamic
legitimacy,
and
in
the
social
activism
of
African
American
women.”59
Initially
Majeed,
was
too
intent
on
contextualizing
womanism
within
radical
subjectivity,
but
through
acting
womanish,
has
been
able
to
problematize
the
very
term
she
at
first
uncritically
appropriated,
and
through
spiritual
and
intellectual
journey,
exercised
radical
subjectivity.
Feminist
(or
if
you
prefer,
Womanist)
Engagement
“There
have
been
multiple
reasons
for
fighting
the
gender
jihad,
many
of
them
so
intimately
connected
to
the
question
of
my
own
well‐being
that
I
scarcely
know
where
to
start.”
Amina
Wadud
The
struggle
for
justice
is
often
struggle
over
contested
meanings.
One
of
the
modes
of
envisioning
a
more
liberatory
Islam
is
through
the
mastering
and
appropriating
of
Quranic
exegesis.
This
can
be
seen
with
the
use
of
metaphors
and
symbols.
A
pragmatic
approach
to
more
female‐inclusive
readings
of
texts
is
to
focus
on
the
figure
of
Hajar.
Within
the
Christian
tradition,
Dolores
Williams
finds
in
the
biblical
figure
of
Hajar
the
prototype
of
the
struggle
of
African
American
women.
Hajar
58
Ibid.,
46.
Debra
Majeed,
“Roundtable
Response
to
Monica
Coleman’s
‘Must
I
be
a
Womanism?’”
Journal
of
Feminist
Studies
in
Religion
22.1
(Spring
2006),
117
59
37
is
the
servant
of
Sarah
and
Abraham,
mother
of
Ishmael60
and
is
cast
into
the
desert
where
she
is
protected
by
God
and
is
actually
the
first
person
in
the
Bible
to
name
God.
She
explores
the
themes
that
Hajar’s
story
exemplifies
and
is
relevant
to
the
shared
experience
of
African
American
women
throughout
history—poverty,
sexual
and
economic
exploitation,
surrogacy,
domestic
violence,
homelessness,
rape,
(single)
motherhood,
exile,
and
encounters
with
God.61
This
female‐centered
African
American
tradition
of
biblical
appropriation
is
named
the
“survival/quality
of
life
tradition”
to
emphasize
God’s
response
to
the
situation
of
black
people,
using
God’s
response
of
survival
and
quality
of
life
to
Hajar
and
subsequently
to
African
American
women
of
slave
descent.62
This
departs
from
the
liberation
tradition
of
African
American
biblical
appropriation
as
it
de‐emphasizes
God’s
relation
to
men
in
liberation
struggles
and
male
authority
and
instead
lifts
up
the
biblical
narrative
of
a
female
slave
of
African
descent.
Amina
Wadud
uses
the
story
of
Hajar
is
a
similar
way,
especially
when
she
auto‐
ethnographically
problematizes
the
position
of
single
motherhood
within
the
Islamic
tradition
which
she
claims
is
not
commented
on
and,
by
default,
not
resolved.
The
Hajar
paradigm,
Wadud
hopes,
challenges
reformist
discourse
by
Muslim
males
whose
privileging
and
sustenance
of
patriarchal
traditions
which
still
leave
those
who
suffer
from
“elitist
reform
discourse,”
such
as
poor
mothers
invisible.
60
Hagar
is
mother
of
Ishmael
in
the
Judeo‐Christian
traditions
and
the
mother
of
Isaac
in
the
Islamic
tradition.
61
Dolores
Williams,
Sisters
In
The
Wilderness:
The
Challenge
Of
Womanist
God‐talk
(New
York:
Orbis
Books,
1993),
5.
62
Ibid.,
6.
38
Islamic
personal
law
is
built
upon
a
notion
of
family
that
does
not
include
a
woman
thrown
into
the
desert,
forced
to
construct
a
healthy,
happy
life
for
her
child
and
to
fend
for
herself.
Islamic
law
for
family,
as
constructed
and
still
maintained,
is
not
only
premised
upon
an
ideal
of
an
extended
family
network,
it
presumes
that
a
woman
will
never
for
any
reason,
become
responsible
for
providing
for
providing
for
and
protecting
herself
and
her
offspring.63
For
Wadud,
the
Hajar
paradigm
challenges
Muslims
to
reevaluate
concepts
of
family,
motherhood,
and
community
into
more
egalitarian
notions.
In
addition,
the
emphasis
on
Hajar’s
positionality
as
contributing
to
these
discourses
alludes
to
the
“inherent
value”
of
the
deployment
of
a
radical
black
female
subjectivity.
In
light
of
this
chapter,
the
work
Wadud
is
doing
with
the
Hajar
paradigm
can
“fit
comfortably”
within
the
womanist
tradition.
Wadud
uses
her
specific
experience
and
a
reclamation
of
the
Hajar
story
to
provide
social,
political,
and
religious
commentary
on
the
adequacy
of
Islamic
law
and
constructions
of
tradition,
family,
and
gender
roles.
She
thus
uses
the
experiences
of
African
American
female
heads
of
households
to
think
about
reform
notions
of
Islamic
law
just
as
“Hajar
was
a
representation
of
the
inadequacy
of
patriarchal
worldviews
within
the
context
of
religious
law
and
personal
status
in
Islam.”64
Dolores
Williams,
who
used
this
Hajar
appropriation
more
than
a
decade
earlier,
is
one
of
the
first
generation
of
womanists
who
appropriated
the
term
to
inspire
their
theological
work
that
was
grounded
in
the
experience
of
black
womanhood.
Thus,
Wadud
is
part
of
this
tradition
as
according
to
Williams,
“womanist
theology
challenges
all
oppressive
forces
impeding
black
women’s
survival,”
and
Wadud’s
paradigm
emerges
from
her
own
experiences
of
survival.
But
she
challenges
it
63
Amina
Wadud,
Inside
the
Gender
Jihad:
Women's
Reform
in
Islam
(Oxford:
Oneworld
Publications,
2006)
144.
64
Ibid.,
153.
39
through
her
non‐Christian
reality
and
through
not
circumscribing
her
new
paradigm
with
ontological
meaning
of
what
it
means
to
be
black
and
female.
Wadud
posits
this
paradigm
as
a
resource
within
the
broader
politics
of
gender
jihad
and
to
a
more
holistic
understanding
of
relationships
among
humans
and
with
the
divine.
Behold!
I
stand
a
woman
and
my
scarf.
Now
what’s
so
scary
‘bout
little
ole
me?
Is
it
my
brown
skin
phenotype
for
criminality
cordoned
off
in
Banlieus
of
France
Ghettos
of
America:
that’s
got
lawmakers
taking
a
nine
to
liberty?
Or
is
my
crime
in
the
Color,
Faith,
of
my
scarf?
‐Su’ad
Abdul
Khabeer
Another
site
of
engagement
is
through
the
body
politic.
Judith
Butler,
in
a
recent
lecture65
talked
about
how
the
body
makes
demands
on
politics.
To
be
a
body,
she
explained,
is
to
be
exposed
to
social
crafting
and
shaping.
This
body
politic
contextualizes
its
resisting
and
flourishing.
One
thing
that
Carolyn
Rouse
is
interested
in
as
she
studies
a
predominantly
African
American
Muslim
community
in
South
Los
Angeles,
is
the
use
of
black
bodies
as
“sites
of
resistance”
by
African
American
Muslim
women.
Given
that
being
black,
being
a
65
Plenary
presenter
at
the
Third
International
Conference
of
the
Whitehead
Research
Project,
December
3‐5,
2009,
in
Claremont,
Ca.
40
woman,
and
appearing
Muslim
are
already
unprivileged
ways
of
existing,
African
American
Muslim
women
struggle
daily
with
biases
and
stereotypes,
a
daily
performance
of
identity
that
challenges
American
notions
of
race,
class,
gender,
and
community.66
For
African
American
women
who
embrace
the
hijab,
it
is
a
way
to
challenge
Eurocentric
notions
of
female
beauty
and
functions
as
a
symbol
of
female
purity
and
moral
character,
which
allows
them
to
"undo
racist
assumptions
about
the
loose
morals
of
African
Americans.”67
(Radical)
Black
Female
Subjectivity
I
first
approached
this
thesis
to
negotiate
what
it
means
to
be
black,
female,
and
Muslim
and
to
posit
the
struggles
of
these
women
within
the
feminist
tradition.
What
I
have
learned
and
what
informs
my
thesis
is
that
it
is
counterproductive/impossible
to
talk
about
a
African
American
Muslim
woman
identity
because
it
would
result
in
a
particular
brand
of
black
female
essentialism.
My
quest
to
locate
a
site
of
Blackamerican
Muslim
female
subjectivity
where
the
black
female
becomes
what
Jackson
calls
a
“self‐authenticating
subject”
was
problematized
and
complicated
by
different
notions
of
agency,
freedom,
and
subjectivity
that
avoid
constraints
of
relativity
and
feminist
taxonomy.
bell
hooks
in
“The
Politics
of
a
Black
Radical
Subjectivity”
attempts
to
conceptualize
a
self‐determination
that
is
not
only
reflexive
but
also
creative
and
productive,
moving
from
a
marginalized
other
to
a
radical
black
subject.
She
defines
a
black
radical
subject
as
one
who
holds
"an
oppositional
worldview,
a
consciousness,
and
66
67
Rouse,
9.
Ibid.,
65.
41
identity,
a
standpoint
that
exists
not
only
as
that
struggle
which
also
opposes
dehumanization
but
as
that
movement
which
enables
creative,
expansive
self‐
articulation.”68
This
is
significant
as
African
American
Muslim
women
can
articulate
black
spaces
as
not
just
spaces
of
opposition
but
of
actualization,
construct
an
identity
outside
of
hegemonic
prescriptions,
and
recognize
the
centrality
of
blackness
to
resist
whiteness's
racialization.
hooks
presents
a
critique
of
the
resistance
narratives
of
obtaining
the
rights
to
and
privilege
of—which
have
been
critiques
of
black
liberation
movements
in
the
1960’s
and
of
Western
feminism.
An
interesting
aspect
of
authenticating
the
self
is
the
danger
of
insulating
ones
journey
within
the
personal
or
the
concept
of
the
unitary
self.
hooks
brands
this
as
narcissistic
and
subsumes
radical
politics.69
Radical
subjectivity
involves
sharing
contradictions.70
Carolyn
Rouse’s
ethnographic
study
highlights
the
importance
of
sisterhood
and
the
discussions
African
American
Muslim
women
would
have
about
various
topics
of
religion,
especially
typical
controversial
topics
that
may
generate
ambivalence.
The
Southern
California
African
American
Muslim
community
she
engages
with
exhibits
sister
programs
where
African
American
Muslim
women
could
articulate
religious
teachings
for
themselves,
negotiating
their
own
spaces
within
group
membership
of
the
Muslim
community.
She
has
never
heard
a
woman
call
her
To
prayer
still
she
answers
Bears
witness
five
times
a
day
68
bell
hooks,
“The
politics
of
radical
Black
subjectivity,”
in
Yearning:
Race,
gender,
and
cultural
politics
(Boston:
South
End
Press,
1990)
15.
69
hooks,
Black
Looks:
Race
and
Representation
(Boston:
South
End
Press,
1992),
49‐51.
70
Ibid.,
56.
42
She
faces
East
And
washers
her
body
covers
her
human
form
In
preparation
to
meet
the
Most
High
‐Suheir
Hammad
A
major
implication
of
a
radical
black
female
subjectivity
is
linking
subjective
historic
experience
with
the
experience
of
the
divine.
Rouse
uses
the
concept
of
engaged
surrender
to
illustrate
feminist
Islamic
exegesis
by
portraying
the
underrepresented
voices
of
African
American
women
and
their
engagement
with
Islamic
texts,
scholarly
challenges,
and
the
creation
of
a
community
which
understands
gender
equity
whether
it
be
about
issues
of
hijab,
polygyny,
or
husbands
superiority
over
wives.
Ultimately
conversion
is
a
way
for
African
American
women
to
construct
a
new
reality
through
political
consciousness
and
spiritual
epiphany,
a
multifaceted
identity
(re)formulation
that
involves
both
aspects
of
ambivalence
and
empowerment.71
Thus
religious
praxis
is
not
only
a
representation
of
living
according
to
God’s
will,
but
“a
strategic
deployment
of
alternative
approaches”
to
hegemonic
discourse
of
race,
gender,
class,
faith,
and
community.72
Rouse
actually
explicates
that
‘‘Muslim
women
recognize
Islam
to
be
the
first
‘feminist’
monotheistic
religion.”
That
is,
they
see
it
as
the
first
religion
to
bring
systematic
social
reform
and
rights
to
women
in
a
patriarchal
society.”73
Amina
Wadud,
a
“pro‐faith,
pro‐feminist
academic
and
an
activist
creating
reform,”
explores
the
notion
of
the
human
being
based
on
a
relationship
with
the
divine.
Sacred
systems
are
not
inherently
patriarchal
and
can
be
redeemed.
She
71
Rouse,
19.
Ibid.,
10‐11.
73
Ibid.,
150.
72
43
“wrestles”
with
the
“hegemony
of
male
privilege
in
Islamic
interpretation
as
patriarchal
interpretation,
which
continuously
leaves
a
mark
on
Islamic
praxis
and
thought.
Too
many
of
the
world’s
Muslims
cannot
perceive
a
distinction
between
this
interpretation
and
the
divine
will,
leading
to
the
truncated
notion
of
divine
intent….limited
to
the
male
stream
perspective.”74
Wadud,
whose
work
can
be
defined
as
part
of
the
legacy
of
black
feminist
tradition
finds
her
source
of
inspiration
in
the
Quran,
where
radical
subjectivity
that
leads
to
social
justice
is
a
divine
mandate.
Karim’s
article
about
women
in
the
Nation
of
Islam
offers
a
different
lens
to
celebrate
that
historical
legacy.
Her
discussion
with
Marjorie,
a
self‐identified
African
American
woman
illustrates
how,
through
the
Nation
she
learned
to
love
her
blackness
(of
herself
and
her
race).75
bell
hooks
in
Black
Looks
states
that
“In
a
white
supremacist
context
‘loving
blackness’
is
rarely
a
political
stance
that
is
reflected
in
everyday
life.”76
Loving
blackness
is
a
powerful
tool
of
resistance
and
opposition.
By
highlighting
these
voices,
Karim’s
work
is
important
for
the
greater
project
for
readers
to
access
the
black
feminist
tradition
and
oppositional
stance.
Talking
Black
Patricia
Hill
Collins
highlights
the
importance
of
creating
and
recognizing
alternative
epistemologies.
“Black
feminist
thought,
then,
specializes
in
formulating
and
74
Saliba
Ahmed,
“Gender
Equality
under
Article
8:
Human
Rights,
Islam
and
‘Feminisms’”
delivered
at
the
13th
Malaysian
Law
Conference.
http://www.malaysianbar.org.my/gender_issues/gender_equality_under_article_8_human_rights_islam_a
nd_feminisims_by_salbiah_ahmad.html
75
Jamillah
Karim
“Through
Sunni
Women's
Eyes,”
19.
76
Hooks,
Black
Looks,
10.
44
rearticulating
the
distinctive,
self‐defined
standpoint
of
African
American
women.”77
She
uses
black
women’s
experience
“as
a
point
of
contact”
between
the
different
epistemologies
of
Afrocentric
and
feminist
thought.
This
challenges
assumptions
that
black
women
have
“a
more
accurate
view
of
oppression,”
as
if
oppression
is,
following
King’
critique,
additive.
This
reference
point
“produces
a
potentially
clearer
standpoint.”
Debra
Majeed
attempts
to
identify
a
more
defined
black
female
Muslim
tradition
that
both
highlights
difference
yet
includes
Muslim
women
within
Womanist/Black
Feminist
tradition,
which
can
incorporate
the
scholarship
of
Wadud,
Karim,
Rouse,
and
herself.
A
black
feminist
tradition,
while
not
strictly
delineated
or
canonized,
is
one
specific
feminist
practice
that
is
attentive
to
the
particular
realities
of
black
women
in
the
United
States.
I
read
an
ethic
of
enlargement
in
theory
that
necessitates
the
induction
and
inclusion
of
Muslim
voices
into
the
black
feminist
tradition.
In
the
next
chapter,
situating
African
American
Muslim
women
within
a
larger
transnational
framework
allows
for
connections
to
be
drawn
between
the
work
that
black
feminists
are
doing
and
the
work
being
done
by
other
groups,
creating
solidarities
which
is
essential
for
social
justice.
77
Patricia
Hill
Collins
“The
Social
Construction
of
Black
Feminist
Thought,”
in
Words
of
Fire,
341.
45
Chapter
4
Islamic
Feminism
and
The
Woman
Question
“Islamic
feminism
is
not
a
coherent
identity,
but
rather
a
contingent,
contextually
determined
strategic
self‐positioning.”
This
chapter
engages
with
multiple
critique
by
looking
at
how
African
American
Muslim
women
enter,
critique,
and
contribute
to
discourses
about
Islamic
feminism.
As
illustrated
within
the
context
of
black
feminism
and
womanism,
feminism
is
a
contested
term.
This
contestation
is
further
exacerbated
when
considering
how
Muslims
interact
with
the
term.
Even
though
many
scholars
and
activists
reject
self‐naming
as
a
feminist,
because
of
the
ways
it
has
been
discursively
constructed
and
appropriated,
the
notion
of
an
Islamic
feminism
will
be
considered
here
for
the
purpose
of
seeing
how
Muslims,
specifically
African
American
Muslim
women,
configure
feminism
and
their
work
for
gender
and
social
justice.
Islamic
Feminism
For
starters,
lets
look
at
the
genealogy
of
the
term
Islamic
feminism
and
the
global
use
of
it
by
women
to
claim
rights
within
the
framework
of
Islam
and
interrogate
various
aspects
of
the
Islamic
tradition.
As
works
by
Margot
Badran
and
Valentine
Moghadam
reveal,
“Islamic
Feminism”
was
first
coined
by
Iranian
expatriate
feminists
in
1992
in
the
magazine
Zanan.
After
the
Iranian
Revolution
in
1979
and
the
establishment
of
the
Islamic
Republic
of
Iran,
many
social
and
cultural
controls
were
put
in
place
that
restricted
women.
Out
of
the
disappointment
with
the
gender
policies
put
in
place,
a
46
broad
reform
movement
developed
which
included
people
(like
Maryam
Behrouzi
and
Azam
Taleghani)
who
advocated
for
women’s
rights.78
Moghadam,
in
“Islamic
Feminism
and
its
Discontents,”
shows
how
both
a
secular
and
Islamic
feminist
politic
began
to
emerge
that
largely
found
differences
in
how
(and
if)
Islam,
and
the
Islamization
process
in
IRI,
could
be
a
reference
point
for
feminist
politics
and
women’s
interests.79
It
is
important
to
note
that
Islamic
feminism
debates
at
this
time
also
overlapped
with
conversations
regarding
the
phenomenon
of
Islamic
fundamentalism
(in
the
context
of
modernity,
modernization,
and
secularization),
the
evolution
of
and
opposition
to
the
Islamic
Republic
(and
possibilities
of
reform),
and
the
definition
of
feminism
(in
relation
to
other
women’s
movements
globally).80
Thus,
from
the
outset,
Islamic
feminism
found
itself
struggling
and
strategizing
against
two
kinds
of
impositions
1)
internal
patriarchy
and
2)
ideologies
that
threatened
national,
cultural,
and
religious
identities
and
commitments.
In
other
places
around
the
world,
men
and
women
began
to
use
this
term
in
their
feminist
discourses
and
movements.
Muslims
in
South
Africa,
after
a
long
struggle
against
apartheid
began
to
focus
on
gender
justice,
especially
when
it
came
to
negotiating
mosque
spaces.
Imam
A.
Rashied
Omar
of
Cape
Town
actually
coined
the
word
“gender
jihad,”
that
has
been
expanded
on
by
scholar
Dr.
Amina
Wadud
and
has
come
to
signify
for
many
people
gender
justice.
His
activism
in
anti‐apartheid
peace
building
and
gender
jihad
and
his
engagement
with
the
Quran
raised
the
“ethic
of
78
Valentine
Moghadam,
Modernizing
Women:
Gender
and
Social
Change
in
the
Middle
East
(Boulder:
Lynne
Reinner
Publishers,
2003),
215‐222.
79
Valentine
Moghadam,
“Islamic
Feminism
and
its
Discontents:
Towards
a
Resolution
of
the
Debate”
in
Gender,
Politics,
and
Islam,
eds.
Therese
Saliba
and
others
(Chicago:
University
of
Chicago
Press:
2002),
22.
80
Ibid.,
34.
47
ta’aruf,”
which
centered
on
embracing
the
other
as
an
extension
of
oneself.81
Other
mosque‐centered
movements
began
to
gain
momentum
demanding
more
female
inclusivity,
leadership,
and
access.
Other
Islamic
feminists
have
organized
in
Malaysia
and
Nigeria,
using
“the
revolutionary
spirit”
of
Islam
to
reclaim
the
tradition,
advocate
for
more
public
participation,
and
challenge
oppressive
practices
and
restrictions
especially
with
regards
to
Family
Law.82
Margot
Badran,
as
she
attempts
to
map
out
the
trajectory
of
Islamic
feminism,
provides
a
review
of
feminism
in
the
19th
and
20th
centuries.
Part
of
her
strategy
is
collapsing
notions
of
Islamic
and
secular
feminisms
operating
in
Islamic
countries
such
as
Egypt
and
beginning
a
process
of
looking
at
the
converges
of
the
secular
and
religious.
Upper‐
and
middle‐class
women
observed
how
men
in
their
families
were
freer
to
innovate
while
they
were
more
restricted.
As
women
expanded
their
female
circles,
they
discovered
different
ways
that
they
as
women—across
lines
o
class,
religion,
and
ethnicity—were
controlled.
As
they
imagined
new
lives,
women
began
to
withhold
complicity
in
their
own
subordination.83
As
scholars
like
Badran
and
Amal
Amireh
demonstrate,
Egyptian
feminists
are
usually
considered
secular
with
women’s
liberation
secured
through
equalizing
strategies
by
disturbing
education,
employment,
political
representation,
and
private
law.
During
the
Egyptian
nationalist
movement
many
woman
organized
themselves
politically
and
with
a
feminist
consciousness.
In
the
feminist
movement
in
the
early
part
81
http://www.beyondintractability.org/reflections/peacebuilder_profiles/Rashied_Omar/Rashied_Omar.jsp?
nid=5300
82
Valentine
Moghadam,
“What
is
Islamic
Feminism?
Promoting
Cultural
Change
for
Gender
Equality”
background
note
for
What
is
Feminism
UNESCO
Colloquium,
September
18‐19
2006.
83
Margot
Badran.
Feminists,
Islam,
and
Nation:
Gendering
and
the
Making
of
Modern
Egypt
(Princeton
Univeristy
Press,
1996),
4.
48
of
the
20th
century,
Huda
Shaarawi
famously
cast
off
her
veil
and
organized
to
make
the
state
more
responsible
in
dealing
with
its
social
problems.
As
the
century
progressed,
women’s
political
participation
and
representation
became
more
prominent
issues.
Amireh
points
out
that
activist
Nawal
El
Saadawi,
active
since
the
1970’s,
is
often
framed
within
power
relations
between
first
and
third
worlds,
and
thus
is
not
always
in
control
of
how
she
is
consumed
by
Western
audiences.84
This
evolution
of
claiming
agency
and
defining
rights
within
the
Egyptian
women’s
movement,
Badran
points
out,
has
largely
been
done
within
an
Islamic
subtext.
Much
of
the
feminist
discourse
throughout
the
Middle
East
actually
developed
within
an
Islamic
framework.
The
processes
of
modernity
and
larger
geopolitical
power
negotiations
have
led
to
some
misreadings
of
this
feminist
consciousness
as
undermining
Islam,
as
opposed
to
negotiating
within
an
inherited,
and
for
some
resourceful,
Islamic
tradition.
Thus,
the
often
furious
and
imperialist
opposition
between
feminism
and
Islam
is
debunked.
As
such,
it
makes
sense
that
Badran
challenges
feminism
as
a
Western
creation,
preferring
to
conceptualize
it
as
a
politic
and
ethic
that
disrupts
patriarchal
order
and
transforms
society.
This
has
implications
in
considering
the
compatibility
between
feminism
and
Islam.
“Middle
Eastern
feminisms
in
the
Middle
East,
whether
secular
or
Islamic,
it
seems
important
to
stress
here,
originate
in
the
Middle
East.
Like
feminisms
everywhere,
they
are
born
on
and
grow
in
home
soil.
They
are
not
borrowed,
derivative
84
Amal
Amireh
“Framing
Nawal
El
Saadawi:
Arab
Feminism
in
a
Transnational
World,”
in
Gender,
Politics,
and
Islam,
273.
49
or
‘secondhand.’”85
Thinking
of
feminisms
as
local
and
indigenous
makes
it
descriptive
of
many
struggles
around
the
world.
However,
Badran’s
inclusive
and
accepting
view
of
Islamic
feminism
is
not
shared
by
everyone.
Moghadam
sees
the
benefits
of
Islamic
feminism
in
the
work
it
does
in
changing
the
gender
regime
in
Iran
and
recognizing
the
agency
of
Iranian
women,
which
some
secularists
may
dismiss.
However,
she
does
have
concerns
with
it
regarding
the
actual
politics
that
motivate
Islamic
feminists.
Perhaps
this
is
because
she
attempts
to
differentiate
feminisms
within
an
Islamic
framework
based
on
strategy.
Islamic
feminists
reference
only
the
Quran
when
negotiating
gender
equity,
using
a
theological
focus
for
the
goal
of
equalizing
within
the
public
and
private
spheres.
Other
important
political,
social,
and
economic
arguments
and
strategies
are
not
utilized.86
Thus,
in
her
formulation,
Islamic
feminism
is
not
an
umbrella
term
that
can
describe
the
work
of
people
working
on
women’s
issues
in
Islam.
Moghadam’s
concerns
seem
to
suggest
a
further
distinction
of
Muslim
feminists
as
open
to
referencing
other
discourses
and
resources
in
their
pursuit
of
justice
and
Islamist
feminists
as
working
for
women’s
rights
within
political
Islam
and
mainly
within
the
public
sphere.87
Moghadam’s
problematization
of
the
terms
Islamic
feminism
brings
up
the
ways
the
modifier
Islamic
may
not
be
an
accurate
collective
subject
of
the
type
of
politics
that
certain
feminists
are
doing,
especially
since
it
appears
that
the
notion
of
an
Islamist
doing
feminism,
with
all
its
baggage
as
a
fundamentalist
standpoint,
is
unsettling.
85
Margot
Badran
“Between
Secular
and
Islamic
Feminism/s:
Reflection
on
the
Middle
East
and
Beyond”
Journal
of
Middle
East
Women’s
Studies
1:1
(Winter
2005),
13.
86
Moghadam,
“Islamic
Feminism
and
its
Discontents,”
38.
87
Ibid.,
44‐48.
50
Minoo
Moallem
is
useful
when
thinking
about
the
claims
that
Islamic
feminism
is
used
in
inaccurate
and
irresponsible
ways.
Her
discussion
of
how
feminism
and
fundamentalism
operate
under
competing
global
forces
concerning
cultural
representation,
makes
both
concepts
suspect.88
This
conversation
is
important
as
feminists
like
Haideh
Moghissi
see
whoever
seeking
authority
in
the
Quran
or
in
the
Sunnah
as
fundamentalist.89
By
showing
how
both
fundamentalism
and
feminism
are
discursive
concepts,
Moallem
is
able
to
complicate
the
perception
that
fundamentalism
is
premodern.
Actually
fundamentalism
is
a
modern
discourse
part
of
the
dialogue
on
modernity.
As
a
phenomenon,
it
is
not
exclusive
to
Islamic
societies
or
the
West.
Feminism
also
has
to
be
thought
of
as
not
particularly
Eastern
or
Western.
Actually,
such
as
in
the
case
of
some
Islamic
feminisms
(or
Islamist
feminisms),
feminism
and
fundamentalism
work
together
in
different
ways,
simultaneously
and
at
other
times
also
working
in
antagonistic
relationships.
We
see
these
multiple
negotiations
in
the
example
of
the
Islamic
Republic
of
Iran.90
Moallem
discusses
at
length
the
converges
and
divergences
of
these
two
concepts
and
activisms.
For
example,
she
claims
that
they
both
propose
two
very
different
and
opposed
ideas
of
transnationalism.
Feminism,
with
varying
strategies,
has
sought
global
opposition
to
patriarchy.
One
problematic
strategy
has
been
to
frame
women,
especially
brown
women
as
other
to
the
nation.
Fundamentalism
invokes
a
sensibility
of
community,
ummah,
a
“community
of
God”
wherein
women
are
important
parts
of
the
community
in
sustaining
its
values
and
88
Minoo
Mooallem
“Transnationalism,
Feminism,
and
Fundamentalism,”
in
Women,
Gender,
Religion:
A
Reader,
ed.
Elizabeth
Castelli
(New
York:
Palgrave:
2001),
120.
89
cooke,
58.
90
see
Moghadam
“Islamic
Feminism
and
its
Discontents,”
for
more.
51
survival.
Moallem
points
out
how
absolute
values
and
a
“transcendental
ethic”
are
invoked
and
claimed
political.91
This
move
to
draw
out
this
similar
complicity
with
modernity
is
informative
when
thinking
about
Moghadam’s
concern
with
some
Islamic
feminisms
of
reviving
the
ethical
voice
as
an
authoritative
discourse.
Both
are
complicit
in
modernity
and
the
emergent
crisis
that
modernizing
discourses
present—the
negotiation
of
equality
and
difference,
universal
and
particular,
absolutes
and
ambiguities.
Moallem
writes,
“Rethinking
subjectivity,
difference,
and
political
community
is
therefore
especially
important
for
feminism.
In
this
global
war
of
representation,
in
order
for
feminism
to
subvert
fundamentalism,
it
has
to
recognize,
understand,
criticize,
and
disrupt
complicitous
sites
where
it
is
itself
liable
to
fundamentalist
rigidification.”92
Using
this
language
posits
fundamentalism
as
an
ideology
as
opposed
to
identity
and
reflects
how
it
can
consciously
or
unconsciously
be
used
in
places
least
expected,
especially
if
those
places
define
themselves
in
opposition
to
them.
This
move
to
trouble
dichotomies
is
Badran’s
agenda
when
advocating
Islamic
feminism.
Badran’s
claim
is
that
Islamic
feminism
should
not
function
within
dichotomies
such
as
East/West,
secular/religious.
This
movement
is
helpful
when
negotiating
multiple
identities
and
theorizing
about
gender
equity
both
in
Islamic
and
secular
contexts.
It
is
also
important
for
others
when
redeeming
and
radicalizing
Islamic
feminism.
Some
scholars
like
Anouar
Majid
see
Islamic
feminism
as
a
revolutionary
91
Moallem,
125‐126.
Ibid.,
136.
92
52
paradigm
that
is
progressive,
democratic,
anti‐capitalist,
and
anti‐imperialist.93
He
sees
Islamic
feminism
as
a
movement
to
resist
Islamic
fundamentalism
and
global
capitalism.
People
like
Majid
consider
Islam
as
a
corrective
to
social
injustices
rather
than
an
agent
that
perpetuates
them.
miriam
cooke
also
finds
strategic
and
epistemological
value
within
Islamic
feminism
as
a
means
of
self‐positioning,
even
if
that
positioning
ecompasses
gender
conservatism
and
people
resisting
conversativism.
“Islamic
feminism
is
not
a
coherent
identity,
but
rather
a
contingent,
contextually
determined
strategic
self‐positioning.”
It
invites
consideration
on
what
it
means
to
have
multiple
commitments
and
“brings
together
two
epithets
whose
juxtaposition
describes
the
emergence
of
new,
complex
self‐positioning
that
celebrates
multiple
belongings.”94
The
title
of
her
book,
Women
Claim
Islam:
Creating
Islamic
Feminism
Though
Literature,
reflects
her
critical
engagement
with
the
term;
by
claiming,
Muslim
women
are
interrogating
what
it
means
to
be
Islamic
feminists
themselves.
For
instance,
using
the
example
of
Zaynab
al‐Ghazali’s
life,
cooke
shows
how
within
Islamist
movements,
radical
reform
of
power
relations
can
be
negotiated.95
cooke’s
formulation
encompasses
the
continuum
presented
by
Moghadam
between,
Islamic,
Muslim,
and
Islamist
and
as
Islamic
feminists
like
Fatima
Mernissi,
Assia
Djebar,
and
others
take
advantage
of
transnational
Muslim
community,
this
formulation
provides
local,
national,
and
global
critique
and
avenues
for
solidarity.
93
Anouar
Majid,
“The
Politics
of
Feminism
in
Islam,”
in
Gender,
Politics,
and
Islam,
56.
cooke,
59.
95
Ibid.,
99‐103.
94
53
But
how
do
people
think
about
the
works
of
others
who
do
not
self‐position
themselves
as
Islamic
feminists?
Asma
Barlas
has
been
called
an
Islamic
feminist
by
many
such
as
Badran
due
to
her
rereadings
of
the
Quran.
In
2006,
Barlas96
responded
to
Badran’s
conclusion
that
feminism
presents
a
common
language
and
that
Islamic
feminism
“be
retained,
firmly
claimed,
and
repeatedly
explained.”
She
agrees
that
feminism
is
not
intrinsically
Western
even
though
many
Muslims
associate
it
with
the
West
and
use
it
“pejoratively
to
undermine
the
critiques
of
Muslim
patriarchies.”
However,
she
finds
it
difficult
to
speak
as
a
feminist
because
of
all
of
its
implications
in
the
West
of
different
levels
of
Othering.
Her
response
carries
through
four
stages.
A
first,
she
was
outraged
when
she
was
called
a
feminist
because
her
readings
of
a
demasculinized
and
nonpatriarchal
Islam
issue
from
the
Quran.
She
rightly
asks,
“What?!
Do
feminists
think
that
they
have
discovered
equality
and
patriarchy?!”
In
her
second
reaction,
she
found
herself
taking
the
strategy
of
explaining
why
she
was
not
invested
in
the
term
feminist.
To
her,
feminists
find
that
religion
is
the
problematic
discourse
where
even
“Islamic
feminists”
like
Fatima
Mernissi
posit
Islam
as
problematic
and
patriarchal
and
conflates
those
who
practice
it
or
seek
authority
in
the
Quran
as
fundamentalist.
Barlas
uses
hermeneutical
tools
to
radically
assert
that
Islam
is
not
only
nonpatriachal
but
anti‐patriarchal.
“So
even
though
feminists
like
Mernissi
and
I
use
the
same
analytical
language
of
feminism
about
patriarchy
and
sexual
equality,
our
epistemological
approaches
to,
and
understandings
of,
the
Qur’an
are
radically
different.”
Her
third
stage
stems
from
some
correspondence
with
Badran
and
96
Talk
at
Ithaca
College.
Oct
23,
2006.
“Four
Stages
of
Denial,
or,
my
On‐again,
Of‐again
Affair
with
Feminism:
Response
to
Margot
Badran.
54
meditation
on
Badran’s
definition
of
Islamic
Feminism
as
a
discourse
that
actually
locates
its
feminist
mandate
within
the
Quran,
which
is
something
men
and
women
have
been
doing
long
before
the
idea
of
“feminism.”
In
this
stage,
Barlas
is
more
persuaded.
Finally,
where
Barlas
is
at
now,
is
again
resisting
feminism
in
any
and
all
forms
as
it
is
complicit
in
“reading
oppression
into
Islam
and
reading
liberation
out
of
the
West’s
imperialists
depredations.”
The
continued
legacy
of
the
West
defining
in
opposition
makes
it
difficult
to
redeem
feminist
theorizing.
She
recognizes
this
as
a
“self‐defeating
strategy”
as
feminism
and
other
imperialist
concepts
are
inherited
and
prevalent.
Troubling
Muslim
Woman
“If
there
is
one
universal,
it
cannot
be
inclusive
of
difference.”
Gayatri
Spivak
When
African
American
communities
encountered
Muslim
immigrants,
especially
after
1965,
they
also
encountered
prescribed
meanings
on
Muslim
women
bodies
as
oppressed
or
submissive
victims
of
patriarchal
domination.
How
do
African
American
women
fit
into
the
1400
year
old
history
of
Islam
and
construction
of
Muslim
women?
How
do
they
interact
with
and
trouble
these
notions
as
the
negotiate
a
discourse
on
Islamic
Feminism?
Jasmine
Zine
examines
politics
of
knowledge
production
and
how
power
works
through
discursive
practice.
She
draws
out
how
representations
of
Muslim
women
were
determined
by
the
relationship
between
the
Islamic
world
and
the
West
where
shifts
of
power
corresponded
to
“shifts
within
the
archetypal
paradigm
of
the
‘Muslim
55
woman’
as
a
literary
invention
and
later
as
an
object
of
western
feminist
gaze.”97
She
reveals
how
constructions
of
Muslim
women,
“positioned
upon
the
geopolitical
stage
not
as
actors
in
their
own
right,
but
as
foils
for
modernity,
civilization,
and
freedom”
became
ahistorical
and
undifferentiated.
She
explicates:
Therefore,
the
western/Orientalist
construction
of
Muslim
women
has
maintained
currency
.
Despite
the
fact
that
it
resents
distorted
and
static
images.
On
the
other
hand,
the
concrete
social
category
of
“Muslim
woman”
absorbs
many
meanings
and
incorporates
various
individual,
cultural,
and
sectarian
interpretations
of
Islam.
As
such,
there
is
a
disjuncture
between
the
various
discursive
paradigms
that
attempt
to
contain
Muslim
women’s
realities
(including
those
equally
limiting
construction
from
fundamentalists
perspectives)
and
their
varied
ontological
experiences.98
This
indicates
how
the
relationship
of
the
Islamic
world
and
the
“West”
has
imagined
the
Muslim
woman
as
a
means
to
establish
or
sustain
authoritative
and
otherizing
discourses.
The
colonial
and
Orientalist
models
of
Muslim
woman
have
persisted
through
postcolonial
struggles,
the
Iranian
revolution,
events
in
Palestine
and
the
Gulf,
and
9/11.
The
persistence
of
paradigms
constructing
Muslim
women
as
oppressed
and
in
need
of
saving
has
also
informed
feminist
scholarship
which
has
worked
in
efforts
to
save
or
liberate
Muslim
women.
This
scholarship
has
evolved
in
some
ways
into
a
focus
of
locating
agency
or
finding
resistance.99
As
such,
in
popular
imagination
and
in
some
academic
and
feminist
work,
Muslim
women
have
become
branded
by
and
bound
to
the
category
“Muslim
Woman,”
which,
97
Jasmine
Zine,
“Muslim
women
and
the
Politics
of
Representation”
The
American
Journal
of
Islamic
Social
Sciences
19:
4
(2004),
2.
98
Ibid.,
18.
99
Mahmood,
6‐8.
56
in
many
ways,
actually
does
not
have
strong
Quranic
grounds.
Thus,
with
the
wave
of
immigrant
Muslims
and
the
geopolitical
conflicts
and
power
maneuvering
of
the
day,
constructed
Orientalist
notions
of
the
Muslim
woman
being
silent,
submissive,
and
absent
complicated
the
realities
of
African
American
Muslim
women.100
In
addition
authoritative
discourses
that
subjected
the
category
“Muslim
woman”
were
also
shaped
by
the
particular
cultural
practices
and
interpretations
of
immigrant,
primarily
Arab,
Muslims
on
how
the
ideal
Muslim
woman
should
look
and
behave.
Aminah
McCloud
illustrates
how
"Muslim
woman"
is
in
reference
to
dress
and
etiquette.
The
Muslim
woman
is
one
who
looks
Muslim,
wearing
a
scarf
that
covers
her
hair,
neck,
and
bosom.
Her
dress
touches
the
ground,
her
sleeves
close
at
the
wrist,
and
whether
she
wears
a
blouse
and
pants
or
a
dress
at
the
her
clothing
must
be
loose
enough
so
that
it
does
not
show
her
form.
This
Muslim
woman
is
obedient
to
her
husband,
takes
constant
care
of
her
children,
and
soft
spoken.
She
does
not
want
much,
is
content,
and
understands
that
this
behavior
is
pleasing
to
God.
Her
obligations
as
a
Muslim
are
marginalized.
If
she
does
not
look
like
a
Muslim
woman
she
is
not
a
Muslim
woman,
even
if
she
prays
five
times
daily,
pays
zakat,
fasts
during
Ramada,
and
saves
to
make
hajj.101
For
some
African
American
women,
this
notion
is
attractive
and
ideal.
For
others,
it
functions
as
another
layer
of
oppression.
Amina
Wadud
does
an
excellent
job
of
using
the
Hajar
paradigm
to
problematize
the
notion
of
the
Muslim
woman
(and
the
family
and
motherhood)
and
how
that
notion
of
a
woman
who
is
primarily
wife
and
mother
renders
single
working
mothers
invisible
or
does
not
provide
a
space
to
talk
about
poverty.
Wadud
extends
critiques
of
constructions
of
Muslim
womanhood
(from
colonialist
or
fundamentalist)
to
reformist
dialogue,
which
may
fight
for
gender
equity
100
101
McCloud,
147.
Ibid.,
147.
57
but
overlooks
the
experiences
of
poor
mothers.102
With
this
critique,
Wadud
is
then
able
to
re‐imagine
kinship
and
family
to
make
sure
injustices
do
not
go
unchecked,
that
issues
like
moral
upbringing,
domestic
work,
and
child‐rearing
are
not
delegated
based
on
biological
determinism,
and
that
Islamic
(family)
law
is
not
based
on
limited
constructions
of
gender
and
family.
Meditating
on
women
like
Hajar,
Wadud
explains
how
“Islamic
personal
law
is
built
upon
a
notion
of
family
that
does
not
include
a
woman
thrown
into
he
desert,
forced
to
construct
a
healthy,
happy
life
for
her
child
and
to
fend
for
herself.”103
Another
way
the
notion
of
“Muslim
woman”
is
troubled
is
in
McCloud’s
reflection
of
bell
hooks’
statement
that
the
focus
of
women’s
silence
may
reflect
what
happens
in
WASP
communities,
whereas
women
in
black
communities
have
not
been
silent,
their
challenge
“to
make
a
speech
that
compels
listeners,
one
that
is
heard.”104
McCloud
asserts
that
African
American
women
do
not
see
themselves
as
silent.
Rather
they
maybe
“hostage
to
the
need
to
survive.”105
As
indicated,
many
women
including
some
African
American
women
are
not
“powerless”
in
the
ways
that
other
groups
are.
When
particularizing
Muslim
Womanist
Philosophy,
Majeed
emphasizes
how
African
American
legacies
of
slavery
and
racial
segregation
ensures
that
they
“do
not
share
the
powerlessness
reflective
of
the
journeys
of
some
white
women
and
other
Muslim
women.”106
102
Wadud,
Gender
Jihad,
126.
Ibid.,
144.
104
bell
hooks,
Talking
Back:
Thinking
Feminist,
Thinking
Black
(Boston:
South
End
Press,
1989),
6.
105
McCloud,
145.
106
Majeed,
“Womanism
Encounters
Islam,”
50.
103
58
As
such,
as
African
American
Muslim
women
negotiate
gender,
there
can
be
a
place
where
gender
roles
and
gendering
functions
may
be
appreciated
due
to
greater
male
accountability,
as
some
NOI
women
have
testified.107
In
addition,
thinking
about
specific
histories
and
experiences
of
Muslim
women,
for
example,
in
some
African
American
communities,
the
practice
of
polygyny
may
be
viable
due
to
a
negotiation
of
economic
conditions,
cultural
norms,
and
other
factors.108
Debra
Majeed
looks
at
polgyny
in
the
face
of
African
American
particularities,
cultural
patriarchy,
and
cultural
exegesis
and
how
it
practiced
by
many
African
American
women
by
choice
due
to
interpretation
of
the
Quran,
desire
for
independence,
survival,
or
needing
a
father
for
their
children.
As
Majeed
draws
out
the
complex
processes
that
may
drive
this
inhabiting
of
norms,
she
challenges
notions
of
Muslim
women
and
their
agency.
This
scholarship
also
makes
room
to
address
injustices
in
the
system
in
a
more
nuanced
manner
that
affords
integrity
to
the
subjects,
and
think
about
other
possibilities
of
family,
love,
and
marriage.
Majeed
is
clear
to
state
that
Muslim
Womanist
Philosophy,
which
both
affirms
and
challenges
womanist/feminist
politics,
is
not
Islamic
feminism.
Firstly,
she
describes
its
failure
to
adequately
address
the
social
contradictions
in
American
society.
Race
and
religions
are
“codependent”
just
as
the
gender
and
race
cannot
be
paced
in
any
categorical
hierarchy
as
reflected
in
the
previous
chapter.
Also,
“non‐Western
and
sometimes
multicultural,
Islamic
feminism
is
often
closely
identified
with
the
legacy
of
107
see
Karim
“Through
Sunni
Woman’s
Eyes”
Debra
Majeed,
“Muslim
Marriage:
A
Womanist
Perspective,”
talk
given
at
Ain’t
I
a
Womanist
Too?
Third
Wave
Womanist
Religious
Thought,
Claremont
School
of
Theology,
February
26,
2010.
108
59
Western
(white)
feminism,
which
is
informed
as
much
by
class
and
white
female
privilege
as
it
is
by
secularism.”
Finally,
politics
is
personal
and
community
is
important.
“The
struggles
of
other
Muslim
women
sometimes
differ
from
those
of
American
Muslim
women
whose
practice
of
Islam
is
not
driven
by
traditions
or
cultures
cemented
on
a
different
shore
and
still
imposed
upon
the
principles
of
the
faith.”
What
to
some
is
oppressive
others
celebrate
as
“authentic
expression
of
particularity”
Engaged
Surrender
Carolyn
Rouse’s
important
ethnographic
work
looks
at
two
African
American
Muslim
communities
in
Los
Angeles.
Rouse
departs
from
other
ethnographic
works
that
look
at
African
American
women’s
experience
with
Islam
mostly
in
the
Nation
of
Islam
as
one
that
brackets
women
in
negative
discourses
of
patriarchy
and
misogyny
of
male
black
nationalism
in
the
1960’s
and
1970s.
"The
rhetoric
of
patriarchy,
for
example,
may
be
deployed
not
to
make
women
submissive,
but
to
instill
in
men
a
sense
of
responsibility,"109
in
refutation
of
these
generalized
negative
perspectives
of
gender
performance
in
African
American
Islam.
So
she
focuses
on
why
these
women
choose
to
be
part
of
the
Sunni
tradition,
especially
given
the
claims
that
conversion
is
reproducing
their
oppressions.
She
argues
that
it
is
the
very
presence
of
the
Sunni
tradition
and
its
modes
of
engagement
such
as
exegesis,
or
tafsir,
(functioning
as
an
“authorized
discourse”
between
men
and
women)
which
provide
avenues
of
participation
for
African
American
women
to
negotiate
alternative
spaces.110
109
110
Rouse,
16.
Ibid.,
6.
60
In
Rouse’s
encounter
with
African
American
Muslim
women
who
are
navigating
the
ambivalence,
ambiguity,
and
multiple
belongings,
she
suggests
that
these
converts
actively
choose
to
both
submit
to
and
claim
Islam
as
a
counter‐hegemonic
faith.
Rouse
says,
“Islam
is
their
epiphany.”
With
this
reading,
Rouse
claims,
“Muslim
women
recognize
Islam
to
be
the
first
“feminist”
monotheistic
religion.”111
If
they
don’t
want
to
be
called
feminist,
it
is
for
political
reasons.
With
this
framing,
Rouse
uses
Hudah’s
perspective
to
indicate
how
she
uses
Islam
to
demand
the
recognition
of
injustice
against
all
sub
groups.
African
American
Muslim
women
are
not
reproducing
their
oppressions
or
revisiting
patriarchy,
as
some
may
suggest.
Many
of
these
women,
in
participation
in
mosque
activities
and
in
active
interrogation
and
discussion
in
community
of
Islamic
practices,
“interpret
Quran
as
anti‐racist,
feminist,
and
as
a
blueprint
for
a
redistributive
capitalist
system.”
This
relates
to
Majid’s
articulation
of
Islam
as
a
revolutionary
paradigm
as
a
way
to
transform
society
through
challenging
racism,
sexism,
economic
exploitation,
and
other
hegemonic
discourses
and
systems.
Pro‐Faith,
Woman‐friendly
Amina
Wadud
is
involved
in
many
strategies
for
gender
justice.
She
is
part
of
the
mosque
movement
as
she
is
the
first
woman
to
lead
a
mixed
congregation
of
men
and
women.
Traditionally
only
men
lead
prayers
if
men
are
present.
She
is
also
involved
in
“textual
activism”
like
Barlas.
Wadud
critiques
some
of
the
early
Muslim
feminists
arguing
that
many
of
the
first
Muslim
feminists
had
to
work
within
Islam
contexts
111
Ibid.,
150.
61
because
they
did
not
choose
to
be
Muslim.
Thus
the
modifier
Muslim
is
unspecific
to
whether
Muslim
women
are
coincidently
Muslim,
pro‐Islam,
and
how
they
define
Islam.
Despite
how
others
may
categorize
me,
my
work
is
certainly
feminist,
but
I
still
refuse
to
self‐designate
as
feminist,
even
with
“Muslim”
put
in
front
of
it,
because
my
emphasis
on
faith
and
the
sacred
prioritize
my
motivations
in
feminist
methodologies.
Besides,
as
an
African‐American,
the
original
feminist
paradigms
were
not
intended
to
include
me,
as
all
the
works
on
Womanism
have
soundly
elucidated.
In
addition,
socialist
feminism
has
focused
clearly
on
the
significance
of
class
as
it
further
problematizes
the
origins
of
feminism
in
the
West.
Finally,
Third
World
feminisms
have
worked
tediously
to
sensitize
women
and
men
to
the
complexities
of
relative
global
realities
to
resolving
universally
existing
but
specifically
manifested
problems
in
areas
like
gender.112
Wadud
identifies
as
pro‐faith,
pro‐feminist
to
highlight
the
commonalities
between
her
approaches.
Ultimately
the
most
important
part
of
her
naming
is
the
pro‐
faith.
She
acknowledges
contributions
of
secular
and
pro‐faith
approaches
to
doing
feminism,
but
that
she
can
only
do
pr‐faith
work
as
the
Quranic
literary
exegesis
and
mandate
for
social
justice
is
primary.
Talking
back
to
the
hegemony
of
male
privilege
and
how
certain
interpretations
get
conflated
with
divine
will
and
“true”
Islam,
Wadud
links
interpretation
of
praxis
and
ideas
of
Allah
since
the
core
of
being
a
Muslim,
surrendering
to
divine
will,
is
compromised
by
“truncated”
notions
of
that
divine
will,
where
the
divine
is
overwhelmingly
understood
as
male
being.
This
engages
with
the
work
of
Asma
Barlas
who
unreads
patriarchy
from
the
Quran.
Conclusion
These
people
who
are
engaged
in
the
conversation
about
feminism
and
Muslim
women
are
obsessed
about
knowledge
production,
how
various
discourses
have
been
produced
and
authorized,
and
how
lives
can
be
improved.
What
comes
to
the
surface
112
Wadud,
Gender
Jihad,
79‐80.
62
and
relates
to
African
American
Muslim
women
is,
1)
the
work
challenging
false
dichotomies
2)
the
idea
of
complex
subjects
with
multiple
belongings
3)
the
expansion
of
Islamic
and
global
feminisms
4)
the
negotiation
of
universal/particular,
individual/community.
The
conversation
of
naming
is
important
even
though
it
is
mostly
done
by
academics,
because
of
the
importance
of
self‐naming,
sharing,
and
implications
for
solidarity
and
reaching
across
boundaries.
African
American
Muslim
women
have
entered
and
contributed
to
the
conversations
about
Islamic
feminism
in
multiple
ways.
They
have
been
able
to
raise
new
issues
not
adequately
addressed
such
as
single
motherhood,
AIDs,
interracial
marriage,
and
polygyny.
African
American
Muslim
women
practicing
multiple
critique
are
helping
to
keep
Islam
relevant
especially
Islamic
feminist
discussions
about
reform,
progressivism,
and
modernity
as
they
use
Islamic
concepts
such
as
ijtihad,
critical
thinking,
and
jihad,
internal
struggle.
63
Chapter
5
Conclusion
African
American
Muslim
women,
through
testifying,
disrupt
and
rearrange
narratives
of
universality
and
discourses
of
power.
As
I
have
shown,
they
have
generated
alternative
notions
of
womanhood
in
black
communities,
Muslim
communities,
black
Muslim
communities,
and
in
American
society.
They
have
complicated
feminist
politics
whether
they
be
Western,
Islamic,
or
black,
whatever
those
modifiers
signify.
This
thesis
explores
the
processes
of
mastering,
appropriating,
and
reclaiming,
especially
when
it
comes
to
Islamic
concepts.
As
illustrated
through
engagements
with
Islamic
frameworks,
a
pro‐faith
agenda
is
important
in
claiming
ownership
of
how
one
wishes
to
interpret
and
claim
certain
traditions
instead
of
being
controlled
by
others
imaginations
and
having
certain
projections
imposed
upon
them.
Law
scholar
Azizah
al‐Hibri
states,
“So
long
as
Muslim
women
are
led
to
believe
that
their
oppression
was
divinely
decreed,
they
will
hesitate
to
change
the
status
quo,
as
oppressive
as
it
may
be.”113
This
is
to
say
that
power
inscribes
concepts
and
what
may
be
regarded
as
truths
or
norms.
Al‐Hibri’s
insight
opens
up
the
necessity
of
education
and
awareness
of
Quranic
exegesis
and
the
ways
certain
interpretations
are
legitimized
and
control
embodied
practices
and
relations.
Attributing
oppressions
to
Islamic
law
or
texts
may
lead
one
to
discard
tradition,
which
will
not
make
patriarchy,
or
racism,
or
heteronormativety
disappear.
Thus,
rejecting
the
113
Azizah
al‐Hibri,
“Deconstructing
Patriarchal
Jurisprudence
in
Islamic
Law:
A
Faithful
Approach,”
in
Global
Critical
Race
Criticism:
An
international
Reader,
ed.
Adrien
Wing
(New
York
University
Press,
2000),
221.
64
possibilities
within
Islam
to
act
as
a
tool
against
various
forms
of
oppression
is
an
unjustifiable
act.
Concerning
Islamic
law,
Al‐Hibri
calls
for
a
recognition
of
the
“flexibility
of
a
and
rich
diversity
within
Islamic
jurisprudence.”114
As
such,
religion
can
provide
many
resources
when
retheorizing.
On
theory
Theory
and
the
processes
of
theorizing
have
consequences,
which
shape
power
and
discourse
and
ultimately
our
notions
of
self
and
everyday
experiences.
Theorizing
is
not
a
neutral
or
objective
project
even
if
some
theorists
claim
or
wish
it
to
be.
Theories
are
constructed,
broken
down,
and
substituted.
They
are
subjective,
strategic,
and
interventionist.
But
we
still
do
it,
theorize
I
mean—because
theories
are
communicative
whatever
their
agenda.
I
guess
I
locate
the
utility
of
theory
in
its
potentia.
Theory
is
useful
insofar
as
it
reflects,
directly
or
indirectly,
the
mechanisms
of
power
and
how
power
inscribes
realities
and
produces
inequality.
It
is
potentially
an
opportunity
to
be
critical
and
creative
through
continuous
and
enlarging
retheorizations.
As
I
put
the
processes
of
Third
Resurrection,
black
feminism,
and
Islamic
feminism
in
conversation,
theory
becomes
communicative
as
a
tool
by
which
people
can
talk
about
power.
Problems
and
frustrations
arrive
when
theory
rests
upon
universalizing
particular
principles,
when
its
comparative/
comprehensive
scope
creates
and
sustains
inequalities
in
power,
and
when
it
creates
barriers
barring
or
misunderstanding
different
voices,
histories,
and
metaphors.
Because
theory
is
114
ibid.
65
communicative
and
interventionist,
it
is
complicit
and
reflects
a
certain
declared
choice
and
thus
the
status
of
theorizing
discourses
needs
to
be
explicitly
problematized.
What
do
these
scholar‐activists
have
to
offer
when
thinking
about
retheorization
and
religion?
If
we
accept
that
power
figures
strongly
in
any
theoretical
framework
and
analysis,
how
can
one
negotiate
commitment
to
religious
membership
with
other
historically
totalizing
worldviews?
Many
binaries
seem
to
be
in
operation
in
such
theorizing
discourses
such
as
modernity/tradition,
freedom/oppression,
resistance/submission,
purity/impurity,
individual/community,
secular/religious,
public/private,
and
nature/culture.
As
any
sincere
and
suspensive
ethic
of
theorizing
would
note,
these
concepts
are
not
so
cleanly
separable
and
are
inconsistent.
How
do
we
theorize
about
these
disruptions?
I
argue
that
African
American
Muslim
women
are
opening
new
epistemological
and
theoretical
frameworks
that
enlarges
theory,
further
interrogating
systems
of
power.
On
Practice
“AZIZAH,
it’s
more
than
a
magazine.
It’s
a
catalyst
for
empowerment.”
The
first
five
issues
of
Azizah
magazine
(2000‐2002)
featured
in
order
an
African
American,
an
Indonesian
American,
a
Latina
American,
an
African
American,
and
an
Arab
American
on
the
cover.
It
is
images
and
profiles
such
as
these
that
Azizah
magazine
strives
to
highlight,
challenging
representations
of
Muslim
women.
In
Jamillah
Karim’s
study
of
this
cultural
production,
she
compares
these
representations
to
the
one
on
the
December
2001
issue
of
Time,
which
displayed
a
woman
wearing
hijab,
passive,
and
sullen.
The
representations
in
the
issue
formed
the
dichotomy
of
veiled
women
under
66
Islamic
regimes
as
oppressed
and
secular
unveiled
women
as
liberated.
Karim
asks
“Where
are
the
images
of
happy
and
strong
Muslim
women
in
colorful
hijab?”115
Azizah
confronts
static
images
of
Muslim
women
and
emphasizes
the
multiple
ways
they
think
about
their
lived
experiences
and
their
multiple
commitments.
These
include
increased
representation
of
different
Muslim
woman
and
different
interpretations
and
ideas
of
Muslim
women.
Karim
claims
that
it
is
the
magazine
founder’s
“multiple
perspectives”
that
contribute
to
its
ability
to
connect
to
many
different
Muslim
women
and
their
experiences.116
Tayyibah
Taylor,
founder,
publisher
and
editor‐in‐chief
of
Azizah
magazine
was
born
in
Trinidad
to
parents
from
Barbados,
grew
up
in
Toronto,
a
resident
of
Saudi
Arabia,
and
is
now
a
citizen
of
the
United
States.117
Karim
utilizes
the
theoretical
claims
of
cooke's
“multiple
critique”
to
situate
the
work
done
by
Azizah.
Azizah
functions
as
a
third
space
facilitating
constant
negotiation
of
what
it
means
to
be
Muslim
in
North
America.
As
a
site
that
represents
Islam
as
polycentric
and
strives
to
depict
the
diversity
of
the
global
ummah,
this
cultural
production
is
a
means
to
build
networks
and
bring
women
together.
The
magazine
has
had
its
share
of
criticisms
from
being
too
inclusive
of
difference
to
not
being
inclusive
enough.
Some
have
responded
to
the
diverse
interpretations
of
Islamic
modesty
and
the
profiles
and
images
of
many
women
who
do
not
wear
hijab.
Other’s
believe
it
is
a
liberal
accommodation
and
too
Western.
Some
have
expressed
the
desire
for
content
that
is
not
so
heteronormative
115
Jamilla
Karim,
“Voices
of
Faith,
Faces
of
Beauty:
Connecting
American
Muslim
Women
through
Azizah,”
Muslim
Networks
from
Hajj
to
Hip
Hop
(The
University
of
North
Carolina
Press,
2005),
170.
116
Ibid.,
179.
117
http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A16085
67
miriam
cooke
helps
to
think
about
Islamic
feminism
in
a
US
context
and
how
persons
of
color,
black
feminists,
womanists,
mujeristas
and
indigenous
and
Third
World
feminisms
interact
with
the
concept
of
Islamic
feminism.
Postcolonial
history
and
the
racialization
of
Muslims
in
the
United
States
signal
a
transition
from
identity‐based
feminisms
(such
as
Arab‐American
feminism)
toward
categories
like
women
of
color.
This
“women‐of‐color
identity
is
a
plural,
polymorphous,
racialized,
and
gendered
way
of
being
a
U.S.
citizen”
and
collapses
recent
immigrants
and
ethnic
communities
with
people
of
color.
“To
call
oneself
a
woman
of
color
as
an
Arab‐American
woman
signifies
the
desire
to
become
part
of
a
new
group,
people
of
color,
who
can
contest
white
hegemony
in
the
United
States.”118
This
positioning
is
referred
to
by
Karim
as
common
“cool.”
Whether
one
thinks
of
themselves
as
woman
of
color,
black
feminist,
Islamic
feminist,
womanist,
or
scholar‐activist,
new
self‐positionings
can
be
assumed
and
new
solidarity
and
oppositional
strategies
can
be
imagined
through
multiple
critique.
On
That
Note…
I
would
like
to
end
basically
where
I
started.
Ain't
I
a
Muslim
woman?
As
African
American
Muslim
women
trouble
notions
of
blackness,
womaness,
and
Muslimness,
new
frameworks,
epistemologies,
and
commitments
are
raised
and
new
appropriations,
networking,
and
basically
politics
are
done.
Appropriation
is
not
surrendering,
but
the
challenging
and
courageous
journey
to
create
change
from
within
and
critically
scrutinize
one’s
pieties,
assumptions,
and
inheritance.
Finally,
this
thesis
begins
the
conversation
between
the
three
moments
of
Sunni
Islam,
black
feminism,
and
Islamic
118
cooke,
146.
68
feminism.
As
my
thesis
attempts
to
fill
in
some
gaps,
there
are
many
that
still
need
to
be
articulated
and
(re)theorized,
and
hopefully
others
will
continue
the
conversation.
69
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